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THEOUGH MAN TO GOD 



THROUGH MAN TO GOD 



BY 



GEORGE A. GORDON 



MINISTER OF THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH, BOSTON 




roeSiWreiflePreg gj 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

(Cbe fiiuerjjibe pre£& Cambri&oe 

1906 



OCT 6 1906 






•Of 



i15. 



COPYRIGHT 1906 BY GEORGE A. GORDON 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published October iqob 



TO 
THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH IN 
TEMPLE MAINE WHERE I BEGAN MY 
MINISTRY; TO THE SECOND CONGRE- 
GATIONAL CHURCH IN GREENWICH 
CONNECTICUT WHERE MY MINIS- 
TRY WAS CONTINUED; AND TO THE 
OLD SOUTH CHURCH IN BOSTON 
WHERE FOR NEARLY THREE AND 
TWENTY YEARS I HAVE SERVED 
SUPPORTED BY THE DEVOTION OF 
A GREAT PARISH I DEDICATE THESE 
SERMONS IN HONOR AND LOVE 



PREFACE 

Toward the close of his life Tennyson said to 
a friend, " My chief desire is to have a new 
vision of God." In this desire the great poet 
is the prophet of all serious men. What is 
final ? What is sovereign ? Who is God ? Up 
into these questions all other human questions 
are at length gathered. Man's destiny is in the 
keeping of man's Maker, whether that Maker 
be mud or mind, cosmic force or Eternal Spirit. 

The ancient question ran, " When shall I 
come and appear before God ? " To-day we 
modify that question and ask, " How shall we 
appear before God ? " Is the character of the 
Eternal accessible to man? And if so, how? 
Along what path may we approach that char- 
acter? Where shall we look for the greater 
witness ? 

There are, finally, but two ways of approach 
to the character of the Infinite, — cosmic nature 
and man. It is true that these exist together in 
a kind of sacramental union. It may seem that 
in any attempt to regard them as opposites, 
there is a violation of the great law, what God 
hath joined together, let not man put asunder. 



Vin PREFACE 

Still, they stand to each other as higher and 
lower, and they speak a different word concern- 
ing the Mystery that is within them and behind 
them. 

Some years ago John Fiske published an in- 
teresting book under the title " Through Nature 
to God." Many men whom I honor found light 
in that book. When I read it, I felt that my 
convictions were fundamentally opposed, not so 
much to the isolated ideas of the book, as to 
the plan expressed in its title. The title of my 
book originated in this fundamental opposition 
to Mr. Fiske's plan. " Through Man to God " 
is the expression that sums up my conception 
of the heart and soul of Christianity. Chris- 
tianity is the interpretation of the Eternal, not 
through nature, but through human nature, not 
through the lower expressions of the creative 
power, but through man, the highest expression. 
The creation at its best gives us the Creator at 
his best ; the highest man is the supreme revela- 
tion of God. 

The sermons in this volume have their unity 
here. They are variations upon this one per- 
sistent theme. The incarnation of God in Jesus 
the perfect man, in all men as moral beings, 
in all good men as the life of their life, is the 
fundamental idea in my philosophy of existence. 
In this volume that idea is presented in the free- 



PREFACE IX 

dom of discourse and in relation to the human 
needs which it is fitted to meet. 

The justification for the publication of a vol- 
ume of sermons is in the ideas that they contain, 
the vitality with which these ideas are pervaded, 
and the literary conscience with which they are 
expressed. If in this sentence I have not vindi- 
cated the appearance of the present volume, I 
have at least indicated my ideal, and I have fur- 
ther written the law in accordance with which 
my book may be condemned. 

George A. Gordon. 

Old South Parsonage, Boston, Mass. 
May 6, 1906. 





CONTENTS 


PAGE 


I. 


God and Hope .... 


. 1 


II. 


The Humanity of God 


23 


III. 


Man the Apostle of God 


. 42 


IV. 


Personality and the Truth . 


64 


V. 


Nature and Humanity . 


. 88 


VI. 


Life and Love and Time . 


. 108 


VII. 


The Servant of Abraham . 


. 135 


VIII. 


The Untroubled Heart 


. 152 


IX. 


Belief and Fear .... 


. 167 


X. 


The Inheritance of Faith 


. 184 


XI. 


The Grace of Kindness 


. 199 


XII. 


The Great Question . 


215 


XIII. 


The Romance and the Reality . 


. 230 


XIV. 


Wise Men and Their Ideals . 


. 248 


XV. 


The Final Theodicy 


. 271 


XVI. 


The Upper Room 


. 286 


XVII. 


God the Comforter 


. 305 


XVIII. 


Toward Evening 


. 329 


XIX. 


Some Continuities of Individual 


Ex- 




istence 


. 347 


XX. 


God All in All .... 


. 372 



THROUGH MAN TO GOD 



GOD AND HOPE 

" Having no hope and without God in the world." 

Ephesians ii, 12. 

The apostle finds among the facts of existence 
what he calls the hopeless life. He traces this 
hopelessness to what he considers its source and 
cause. Hopeless men are Godless men. And 
this atheism is not the mere intellectual denial 
of the Divine existence ; it is also, and far more, 
the moral, the practical denial. The apostle is 
thinking of a mind with no clear and serious 
belief in the Eternal goodness, of a will with no 
high purpose of service, of a heart outside the 
joyous visitations and sympathies that are the 
life of faith. His explanation of this haggard 
existence is that it is without the conscious 
presence of the living God, and therefore with- 
out hope. For him, God and hope are bound 
together as cause and effect. He would as soon 
expect daylight without the sun as to find hope 
in man without God. 

4 

Great persistent emotions have their sustain- 



2 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

ing origin in great persistent ideas. Men seek 
because they believe that they shall find, they 
knock because they believe that it shall be 
opened unto them. Certain things belong to- 
gether in the way of cause and effect, and where 
this connection is not obvious, we may still see 
that one without the other is incomplete. We 
can think of a pedestal without a statue and of 
a statue without a pedestal ; but neither is com- 
plete without the other. The statue is useless 
without the pedestal ; the pedestal is vain with- 
out the statue. The complete work of art de- 
mands the presence of both. It is so with hope 
and God. Hope may exist without belief in 
God, or the sense of his reality, but it is a vain 
hope. Belief in God may exist without hope, 
but this is abnormal. Where there is the con- 
sciousness of God, there is the ground of hope, 
valid, reasonable hope. Where there is no con- 
sciousness of God, there is no ground of hope. 
When we are clear, we conclude that life with 
God is life with hope, that life without God is 
life without hope. 

1. Without God there is no hope of under- 
standing nature. It is indeed true that through 
the courses of the cosmos there is no revelation 
of the moral being of the Infinite. Moral life 
alone can reveal moral life ; soul alone can speak 
for soul. But this is not the whole case. Con- 



GOD AND HOPE 3 

science and love are not the whole of God. God 
is power, thought, beauty, the terrestrial and 
cosmic disposition that on the whole favors life 
in this world. 

If there is anything clear and certain, it is the 
existence of power out and beyond ourselves. 
In every breath, in every breeze, in every gale, 
in all the milder and in all the fiercer attacks 
made upon our life, we are conscious of the ex- 
istence of power other than our own. Any other 
confession is confusion. Any other conclusion is 
a contradiction of the original and final decision 
of the sound mind. Native force of mind is a 
great thing, and here the farmer is not infre- 
quently a better authority than the naturalist. 
The sense of what exists is the beginning of 
wisdom ; it is like the lamp in the dark room. 

Again, the cosmos looks as if it were the 
expression of thought. What a Greek thinker 
long ago discovered in nature would seem to be 
there. There seems to be among the individual 
things that we know an aspiration after the 
complete life. In the flower, in the tree, in the 
bird, in the beast of the field and the fish of 
the sea, there seems to be the persistent struggle 
upward toward completeness. All individuals, 
all groups of individuals, seem to be pursuing 
ends, and these ends seem to be embedded in 
the order and structure of their being. There 



4 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

may be countless failures ; there may be few- 
successes. Still, this struggle toward the attain- 
ment of ideal ends is impressive. Evolution 
when it is sane is little more than a new and 
mightier edition of Aristotle's doctrine of ends. 
All that we see, all that we know, is in move- 
ment toward the complete existence ; and cosmic 
ends without cosmic intelligence is cosmic non- 
sense. 

There is beauty in the world. What shall we 
make of it? It has been said in an interesting 
book that beauty is pleasure objectified. Is that 
enough ? Is that the full and adequate account 
of a beautiful face or a glorious sunset ? Does 
the statement that beauty is altogether a thing 
of the pleased and generous mind, that it is the 
shadow upon the world cast by the rapt soul, 
account for Milton's sorrow over the loss of his 
sight? 

" Seasons return, but not to me returns 
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, 
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, 
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; 
But clouds instead and ever-during dark 
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men 
Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair 
Presented with a universal blank 
Of nature's works to me expunged and rased, 
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out." 

The beauty is in the perceiving mind and in the 



GOB AND HOPE 5 

feeling heart. The inspiration of it is out and 
beyond, in the light of setting suns. The cosmos 
bears the character of an inspirer of beauty ; and 
when our receptivities are dull, or closed, or 
taken away, the vision and the passion of beauty 
revisit us no more. 

There is the cosmic disposition favorable to 
life on the earth. One can imagine a storm in 
which no ship could live, a hurricane which no 
human habitation could survive, a degree of 
heat or of cold destructive of every living thing, 
a blast from some cave of the Furies that would 
spread death everywhere. There is restraint upon 
cosmic hostility to life ; otherwise life would 
cease. On the other hand, there is cosmic favor, 
sympathy, benignity. What shall we do with 
this chastened cosmic hostility and this high 
sympathy ? Natural selection is the phrase that 
leaps for utterance. Nature has bred life from 
the life best adapted to her strange environ- 
ments till she has arrived at races largely har- 
monious with her stern caprices. Her wily off- 
spring know how to dodge her blows and feed 
upon her bounties. It is strange that a metaphor 
should mislead the world. Man the breeder and 
improver of life we know as a person of superior 
mind and skill, but nature the breeder and im- 
prover of life we know as without mind, working 
in the dark, without aim, by sheer luck arriving 



6 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

at tlie stupendous result of life adapted more 
and niore to its environment. Of all the poor 
sophisms that have ever passed for reason, this 
is one of the meanest ; of all the instances where 
scientific bread was demanded and a common 
vulgar stone given, this is the supreme example. 
If in all our adjustments and improvements we 
do nothing more than act in sympathy with the 
cosmic process, then why is our struggle full of 
mind and that process mindless? Nothing can 
disturb the sound mind in its sense of the power, 
the thought, the beauty, and the order of favor 
to life in the cosmos. To say that the thoughts 
and feelings of the individual man are the sole 
realities, is the same as saying that the prisoner 
of Chillon in his dungeon is as high in privilege 
as Byron and Shelley on the wondrous lake or 
among the great mountains. The cosmos is not 
simply vision ; it is at least the vision of power, 
thought, beauty, and favor. If we cannot say 
that the power is cosmic will, that the thought 
is cosmic intellect, that the beauty is cosmic 
soul, that the order favorable to life is cosmic 
sympathy, if we cannot describe as Spirit the 
wondrous whole that so answers to our spirit, 
we must be dumb. We have then a cosmos 
that is a sphinx, — nameless, inscrutable, eternal 
mystery. 

2. Without God there is no hope of under- 



GOD AND HOPE 1 

standing the goodness in man, and in man's 
history. Man is not his own maker. It is true 
that character is an achievement. Still, certain 
powers and aptitudes for this achievement are 
born with the soul. The capacity for discerning 
truth from falsehood, right from wrong, human- 
ity from inhumanity, comes with us into the 
world. The capacity for love in all its high 
forms is a native capacity. There is the lover's 
love, the parent's love, the child's love, the 
patriot's love, the philanthropist's love, the saint's 
love. The capacity that in certain great instances 
bursts into this world of bloom and fruitfulness 
is native to man. So, too, the capacity to serve. 
The heavenly vision is first discriminated from 
the vision of hell, then follows the love of the 
eternal solemnity, then comes the life of ardent 
and happy service. Man is born with a profusion 
of exalted aptitudes. He comes to the moral task 
of life as the sun comes to its daily duty. It 
comes with a fiery heart, with a radiant nature, 
with a luminous and illuminating being. It has 
but to rise and shine, to lift itself above the hori- 
zon and then to let itself go, to appear and to sow 
the earth with its God-begotten beams. This 
is the life of the normal man. His nature is 
stored with aptitudes for his vocation. He has 
a soul with eyes, a heart with a thousand splen- 
dors in it, a will capable of wondrous service and 



8 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

endless loyalty. Unbind him, set him free, let 
his capacities out, let his powers go, and his 
moral achievement is an inevitable achievement. 
When this does not take place, ignorance and 
perversity contradict and baffle the clear inten- 
tion of our being. 

All these things we have inherited. True, 
but that only moves the mystery out of the 
present into the past. A man does not explain 
the production of his wealth by the remark that 
it came to him by inheritance. Wealth is a 
human creation. It implies in its existence some- 
where, labor and sorrow and gladness. The 
thousand high capacities of the soul are not 
explained by the fact of descent. These capa- 
cities are creations ; they are an accumulation 
of creations through the action and reaction of 
human life in the order of the world, and in 
this action and reaction of our human life, 
under the order of the world, there moves the 
originating spirit of God. The river is not ex- 
plained by its course. Its volume at the end 
is not accounted for by the remark that it has 
come a thousand miles. It is not explained by 
the number and the size of its tributaries, nor 
by the country which it drains, nor by the foun- 
tains from which it first issues. The elements, 
the forces, the laws, and the spirit of the whole 
world are needed to account for that great, 



GOD AND IIOrE 9 

beautiful, triumphant river. So it is with man. 
Nothing can account for him but the spirit of the 
whole, the soul of the universe, the best at the 
centre of the Infinite, the heart of the Eternal. 

There is the goodness of the individual per- 
son. In this person pursuing some great ideal, 
many of these exalted aptitudes are in process of 
realization. The process of realization is serious, 
strenuous, sometimes tremendous. Still, it is a 
victorious process. In it the great souls advance 
" by the armor of righteousness on the right hand 
and on the left, by glory and dishonor, by evil re- 
port and good report ; as deceivers, and yet true ; 
as unknown, and yet well known ; as dying, and 
behold, we live ; as chastened, and not killed ; 
as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing ; as poor, yet 
making many rich ; as having nothing, and yet 
possessing all things." And the profoundest note 
in this glorious tumult of triumphant manhood 
is the confession of help out of the unseen, of the 
grace of the Infinite, of the Strength that perfects 
itself in human weakness. The history of a great 
soul is an absolute enigma in a Godless universe. 

There is the family life of man, with its sancti- 
ties and felicities. Here will is much, but nature 
is more ; and at times nature seems the mightier 
witness of God. The efficient will conforming an 
outward environment to its own great purpose 
may have the aspect of self-sufficiency. From 



10 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

the outside and for those who do not search its 
depths, the efficient will may seem the negation 
of God. The flight of the bird is accounted for 
by its own strong wings. But in the rush, the 
surprise, the persistence, the sovereignty, and the 
sweetness of domestic instincts we see a will other 
than our own. The home once established, chil- 
dren born, here to be cared for and loved, here 
to be defended and led up to the threshold of 
manhood and womanhood, the human heart be- 
comes master. The economic activity and worth 
of man, the political genius and service of man, 
the religious vision and passion of man, come out 
of the heart of our human homes. The goodness 
here is the best that we know; it is our own, 
and again it is not our own. The heart of a great 
workman in any vocation, the heart of a patriot 
like Lincoln, of a father like Luther, of a mother 
like Monica, is more than an achievement made 
possible by family life. Without the grace of the 
Eternal, it is an absolute mystery. Without God, 
there is no hope of understanding this supreme 
blossom and excellence of our humanity. The 
best education in faith is to revere the hallowed 
family of the world, and to endeavor to perpetu- 
ate this happiness. The true human home, in 
its possessions, love, service, and hope, speaks for 
itself. Here the heart of honor seems to utter 
like an seolian harp the Eternal honor : — 



GOD AND HOPE 11 

" Speaks not of self that mystic tone, 
But of the over-gods alone. 
It trembles to the cosmic breath 
And as it heareth so it saith." 

Here, too, the high souls of the race speak. 
The final refutation of the universe of Buddha 
is Buddha himself. That great, pure, compas- 
sionate, victorious soul is the negation of the un- 
thinking, unfeeling, and impotent Infinite. Such 
a soul lights the universe to its heart, and shows 
there power and grace equal to the production of 
a spirit thus firm and high. This is the great 
service of the high souls of our race. They are 
not self-made. They are not originations in the 
teeth of fate, in protest against the character of 
the universe. They are one and all the work of 
the Eternal Spirit, one and all apostles of the 
Infinite mystery, one and all witnesses of the 
heart of honor and fire at the core of being, one 
and all revelations of the moral life of God. 
Jesus Christ is the issue of the S3^mpathetic soul 
of the universe. He drew his being from the 
heart of the Eternal Being. He is the apostle 
and high priest of our confession. The universe 
consented to his existence, it was able to give 
him his existence, it must be as good as its best 
issue. 

3. Without God, there is no hope of deliver- 
ance from man's great enemies. It sometimes 



12 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

seems to be true that man is a self-deliverer. 
This power of self -deliverance is the best gift 
that the universe has bestowed upon him. He 
seems to be a self-deliverer from ignorance, eco- 
nomic waste and wrong, physical dishonor and 
pain, vice and crime, and from all uncleanness 
and outrage. It sometimes appears as if the 
prospect of self-deliverance for man were bright 
and alluring. 

But how is this deliverance to be wrought? 
By insight into the laws governing our being 
and by obedience to them. By the vision of the 
path of life and by walking therein. Self-deliv- 
erance is thus through the power of something 
other and greater than man. It is through the 
vision of law and obedience to law ; it is through 
the grace that law breathes into the beholding 
and serving soul. 

This reverses our notion of self-deliverance. 
After all, we are not our own saviours. We 
cross the deep with our ships. The sea becomes 
the great field for the carrying power of a pro- 
ductive race. We triumph on the sea, as else- 
where, by our obedience. Our triumph comes 
through our knowledge of nature's power, our 
invocation of nature's help, our willingness to 
allow nature to fight for us. We achieve by 
laying hold of power other than our own and 
infinitely greater. 



GOD AND HOPE 13 

This is the case when we come to the sphere 
of character. There is man's sin. No soul has 
ever torn itself from the meshes of error and 
wrong without the sense of help from God. No 
such soul would dare face the task of bringing in 
a new moral habit to replace the old habit of sin 
and shame without the promise and prospect of 
Divine help. Moral reconstitution is the task of 
multitudes. It is a task that has two aspects. It 
is an achievement and it is a rescue. The power 
of rescue is out of the Infinite. Indeed, those 
who stand in this tremendous process seem hardly 
to know what we mean by vagueness and uncer- 
tainty about God. He is the new thought in the 
intellect, the new love in the heart, the new tide 
of strength in the will, the new reservoir of power 
behind all the lines of supply coming into their 
lives. He is the breath of their being, the soul 
of their soul. In the awakened, forgiven, eman- 
cipated, victorious soul, God is an ever-present 
reality. In this direction and current of personal 
life God lives, in this tidal movement upon noble 
ends God moves. Those mighty emancipations 
from sin, such as we find in Paul, Augustine, 
Luther, and a multitude of others less impressive, 
take from the subjects of them all doubt about 
God. Those steady ongoings of the soul in honor 
and service are the continuous witness of God's 
presence. How can he doubt God's presence 
whose cry is : — 



14 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

" He brought me up also out of au horrible pit, out of the 

miry clay; 
And he set my feet upon a rock, and established my 

goings. 
And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise 

unto our God." 



When good men look upon the task of making 
the world good, it becomes hopeless without God. 
If there is no sympathy at the heart of things with 
the teacher,, the prophet, the reformer ; if there 
is no eternal gracious presence mediating itself 
through good men in the lofty service of their 
kind, what can we do ? Look out upon the lust 
and greed and cruelty of the world and behold 
our task. Who is sufficient for this task ? Un- 
less we can say our sufficiency is of God, we must 
abandon all high work in despair. I stood once 
in the citadel that overlooks the city of Cairo. 
It was evening. There lay the city on the plain, 
teeming with men and women, ignorant, unclean, 
sinning, and suffering, holding within its compass 
an epitome of the tragedy of the world. There it 
spread till it crumbled in the surrounding desert, 
lost in the desert's loneliness and gloom. And 
towering there in the afterglow of sunset on the 
edge of the boundless waste of sand stood the 
Pyramids, ancient, weird, solemn, preternatural 
witnesses of immemorial wretchedness, desolation, 
and despair. What man, what company of men, 



GOD AND HOPE 15 

what church, what order of churches, can match 
this ancient and nameless sorrow ? I came from 
this vision to the Christian mission in the great 
city. There I found the ground of hope : — 

" God is our refuge aud strength, 

A very present help in trouble. 

Therefore will we not fear, though the earth do change, 

And though the mountains be moved in the heart of 

the seas ; 
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, 
Though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. 
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved : 
God shall help her, and that right early." 

There is, finally, man's greatest enemy, death. 
Death is the enemy of man because man is a lover. 
He has an instinctive love of life ; when true to 
himself, he rises into the love of the dutiful life ; 
when he is reasonably fortunate, his existence is 
at its heart a network of noble attachments. 
The vital instinct hates death ; the conscientious 
servant stands opposed to death ; the lover of 
his kind, of his kindred, of his home, is at war 
with death. Wherever you find a nature burn- 
ing with vitality, a conscience supreme over the 
courses of thought and conduct, a heart with 
a thousand dear interests and a few immortal 
loves, there you find the spirit that refuses the 
comfort of extinction. Wherever human life is 
great, it must wish to go on ; wherever it has 
the capacity for worth, it should go on ; wher- 



16 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

ever it is a high and beautiful character, if the 
Eternal cares for such things, it must go on. 

For what does the universe care ? We may 
answer, only for the endless transformations of 
its own energy. In that case the universe is 
beneath contempt. Honor and worship of it, to 
a clear mind, are impossible. On that basis re- 
ligion could not have begun ; on that basis the 
great religions could never have come into exist- 
ence. If the universe cares for nothing but the 
endless transformation of its own being, it is 
simply brutal and contemptible. 

Let us assume that this is its character. How, 
then, can we account for the beauty into which 
this contemptible universe bursts in the great 
souls of the race, in the normal human homes of 
our kind, in the heart of the faithful the world 
over ? Here is a contradiction too great for the 
sound mind to accept. Can the clean come out 
of the unclean, the high soul out of the brutal, 
the spirit all love, all service, all sympathy, 
whose whole being is a holy sacrificial fire, rise 
up out of the depths of an immoral or unmoral 
universe ? If we must choose among mysteries, 
we must, while we follow reason, set this one 
aside as incredible and impossible. 

High capacities such as we find in men, high 
character and service such as we find in good 
men, would seem to be, if the universe has any 



GOD AND HOPE 17 

moral sense in it, lasting utilities, enduring val- 
ues, abiding splendors. And this is what wo 
mean by God. He is the conscience of the uni- 
verse. He surveys our human world. He sees 
as we do, but with an appreciation infinitely, 
deeper, the high capacity of man. In a multi- 
tude of cases it is held down to the form of mere 
capacity by ignorance, perversity, and the tragic 
courses of society. Still, high capacity it remains ; 
shall not a wise and noble universe rescue and 
conserve that capacity ? God surveys our human 
world again, and notes moral excellence, distinct 
worth, honor in head and heart. He sees the 
vision, the service, and the worth of love. He 
sees men caring for one another, life dear be- 
cause others are alive, and a world of joy born 
out of this reciprocity of noble human hearts. 
This is a vision found only in man's world. Is 
it not worth more to a universe with a conscience 
than the entire realm of physical being ? Is it 
not a value to the universe, a splendor in it? 
Shall not the Infinite conscience keep forever 
this fair result? 

Individually, men may be willing to die and 
sleep in eternal silence. ■ They are unwilling that 
their beloved should pass out of being. They 
are unwilling not only because of the bereave- 
ment to themselves, but also because of the sac- 
rifice to the universe, the outrage upon the work 



18 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

of the Infinite. A lost soul, especially when that 
soul is a soul of worth and beauty, is more than 
the Eternal can well sustain. As Plato said, if 
souls should die, the spiritual being of the uni- 
verse would finally become extinct. It would 
be hard to show that spiritual creation without 
spiritual conservation might not come to this, — 
a universe become a body of death, sunk to a 
rubbish-heap. For this result we cannot look, if 
there is sense and power in the processes of exist- 
ence. Weeds and flowers alike are gathered by 
the gardener's hand, but for different ends. The 
weeds are waste, the flowers are joy. Men and 
all living things are under the power of death, 
but, we must believe, for different purposes. 
Men would seem to belong to the heart of the 
universe; to be among its permanent values, 
splendors, delights. 

I have said nothing of the suffering that 
death brings to the living. If it were believed 
by all bereaved mothers and fathers that death 
is the end, that belief would either degrade and 
corrupt the human heart, or it would drive it 
insane. Destroy hope here and you make exist- 
ence too heavy to be borne ; destroy hope here 
and you break down our humanity ; destroy 
hope here and you call the suffering race to 
arms against the pitilessness and horror of the 
universe. For it is not mere ideas with which we 



GOD AND HOPE 19 

are hero dealing- ; it is flesh and blood, it is 
the loving and suffering heart of man ; it is the 
forces essential to the existence of a living and 
an ascending humanity. 

But how shall this be ? Kill the optic nerve 
and you quench sight, paralyze the auditory 
nerve and you hear no more, destroy the sensory 
nerves and you become dead to the world, fix 
the brain in the frost of death and the mind is 
gone. How plausible and complete it sounds. 
We are still the slaves of sense and not its mas- 
ters. Souls have appeared among us in bodies 
blind, deaf, and dumb ; they have awakened to 
the glory of our world, shared the best life of 
our kind, spoken to us burning words out of the 
night, and we see in this no testimony to the 
independence and sovereignty of soul. We close 
the eye, the ear, the mouth, and leave only feel- 
ing as the outlet of thought, and look how it 
comes forth a river of light and joy. We wish 
to close all means of exit and still to demand 
the response of mind. We destroy the brain- 
habitation, and after that we still expect the 
soul to answer our call. When you take away 
the workman's tools, you do not expect him to 
work. When you pull his house to the ground, 
you expect him, if he is wise and alert, to get 
out of it before it falls. Souls speak through 
the senses. When one sense after another fails, 



20 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

they still speak through the sense that remains. 
When all the senses are gone, they still make 
signs to us, they signal to us like ships in the 
darkness plunging in heavy seas. More than 
this we have no reason to expect. 

We do not yet understand the meaning of 
our greatest discoveries. Consider the miracle 
of wireless telegraphy. There is no mind with- 
out brain ; so runs the light atheistic epigram. 
Here in the wireless electric force is something 
as invisible as any soul. It leaves the body that 
you have made for it and goes in search of a 
body in the unseen. While out on its errand it 
is bodiless, flying along the constitution of the 
world. Consider this current with intelligence 
in it leaving a body here, seeking and finding a 
body there. So much for a cosmic current. 
Shall we look for less in the human soul ? 
When it leaves its body in time, shall we not 
think of it as a current sweeping the unseen, 
searching eternity for the body which it has 
pleased God to prepare for it there, and in that 
body reporting the memories, the thoughts, the 
achievements, sufferings, and hopes of its entire 
earthly career? If with man these wondrous 
transitions are possible, are the transitions of 
souls from the tent here to the house not made 
with hands, eternal, in the heavens, impossible ? 
Ye do greatly err, O hopeless soul. 



GOD AND HOPE 21 

The last word is between a soulless and a 
soulful universe, a moral and an unmoral Infi- 
nite, an Eternal whose attitude toward man is 
one of total indifference, or one of boundless love 
and pity. At heart the universe is either a uni- 
verse of woe or of joy. And this comes round 
to the great antithesis with which we began. It 
is either God and infinite hope, or atheism and 
absolute despair. We choose God and infinite 
hope as our faith because they light up nature 
to the heart, because they account for all the 
precious things in our human world, because 
they cover man in the day of battle and assure 
him of final triumph. We reject atheism and 
despair because they leave nature in the black- 
ness of darkness, because they turn man at his 
best into the burning criticism and condemna- 
tion of the universe that brought him forth, and 
because they convert the future into life's grave 
and love's horror. We abandon atheism and 
inhumanity for faith in the Lord God of our 
fathers, for the God and Father of Jesus Christ. 
For no God and no hope we substitute the Eter- 
nal God and infinite hope. We cry with the 
Psalmist : — 

" Nevertheless I am continually with thee : 
Thou hast holden my right hand. 
Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, 
And afterward receive me to glory. 



22 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

Whom have I in heaven but thee ? 
And there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee. 
My flesh and my heart faileth : 

But God is the strength of my heart and my portion 
for ever." 



II 

THE HUMANITY OF GOD 

" He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." \^^ 

John xiv, 9. 

The greatest thing that we know is man ; the 
greatest man that we know is Jesus Christ. 
When, therefore, we hear him say, " He that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father," we have a 
guide to the heart of the Eternal of infinite 
moment. 

These words have been used to prove the 
divinity of Jesus Christ ; I intend to use them 
as indicating the humanity of God. They have 
been used mainly, one might almost say ex- 
clusively, as giving a supremely exalted vision 
of Jesus; I think they lead to a supremely 
exalted and consoling vision of God. Jesus no 
longer needs vindication or exaltation ; we can- 
not think of a wiser or better than he. He is 
the best that we know, and by his sovereign 
goodness we judge individuals, families, na- 
tions, and races ; by it we judge the universe. 

There is something wonderfully impressive in 
this instinctive retreat in our time upon human- 
ity. When human nature is true to itself, there 



24 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

is nothing equal to it, there is, indeed, nothing 
that will bear comparison with it among things 
that we see. It appeals to sense by its helpful- 
ness. Men are needful to men ; the industry of 
the world, with all its cruelty, is still organized 
brotherhood. Men could not sow and reap, spin 
and weave, cross the land and cover the sea, as 
they do, but for the help of their kind. Civili- 
zation is a witness to the helpfulness of man to 
man. Every building, farm, factory, locomotive, 
ship, store, bank, is a presentation to the eye 
of the sympathy in which man lives. Our city, 
with its schools, churches, hospitals, asylums, 
and with all its avenues and homes steeped in 
a thousand stirring and tender associations, is a 
revelation to sense of the power of our hu- 
manity. 

This human nature reflected in history makes 
its appeal to imagination. Men have done great 
things : they have set bounds to the ferocity of 
nature ; they have turned the cosmos at a thou- 
sand points of antagonism into the servant of 
society ; they are now whispering their thought 
into instruments of mechanical device, and the 
whisper pursues and overtakes the traveler by 
land and by sea ; they have wrought out lan- 
guages of great fullness and beauty; they have 
entertained splendid visions and recorded them 
in imperishable words ; they have construed the 



THE HUMANITY OF GOD 25 

meaning of the nature beyond them, the nature 
within them, and they have created by their 
insight and sympathy great literatures. They 
have taken form, as in sculpture and building ; 
color, as in painting; sound, as in music and 
in poetry, and they have made these the finished 
and impressive representatives of the deepest 
thoughts and the holiest feelings. They have 
established governments, and striven for the 
realization in human society of sublime ideals. 
When one adds to this achievement the greater 
religions, — the religion of Buddha, the religion 
of the Hebrews, the religion of Jesus Christ, — 
and considers these religions as creations of the 
human soul, one is overawed in the presence 
of the range, the splendor, and the majesty of 
man. When one allows these great reflections of 
man in the vast and precious mirror of his- 
tory to enter and possess the imagination, it is 
impossible not to think of him as the superlative 
wonder. 

There is in life besides all this, love. Man 
counts to man more than all else because of 
love. Every successive generation of lovers hal- 
lows anew this weary world. The light of their 
eyes is brighter than the sun, the treasure in 
their hearts is beyond estimate. They perpet- 
ually renew the meaning of existence, and con- 
vert the old earth into a scene of endless ro- 



26 THROUGH MAN TO GOB 

mance and tenderness. Where is there a hill or 
valley, stream or lake, city or shore, that is not 
thus invested with the sanctity of the lover's 
dream and passion? The planet rolls in an 
atmosphere fifty miles in depth, but deeper far, 
purer and richer infinitely, is that other atmos- 
phere in which it flies, created out of the heart 
of the immemorial succession of lovers. This 
treasure that invests nature with new meaning is 
increased by every true human home. A child 
is frail, it is indeed nothing, measured against 
the cosmos, but in value it is infinite. Here is 
a possession that makes great the human heart. 
The love of a parent for a child reacts upon his 
sense of the worth of humanity ; human nature 
is greatened in this passion ; every extension of 
love issues in a new consciousness of the value 
of man. The love that counts the lives of others 
precious, that serves them in the light of a lofty 
ideal, that identifies its good with theirs, that 
holds itself as the sovereign value in existence 
and of more worth infinitely than all that can be 
set against it, that love which is the core, the 
highest working power, indeed nearly the whole 
constructive force in human history, makes the 
nature that it glorifies a unique approach to the, 
Eternal. 

I have said that this instinctive retreat upon 
our humanity is impressive. Consider the times 



THE HUMANITY OF GOD 27 

in which we live : only a few years since, man 
was leveled down to the animal, or the animal 
was leveled up to man. How old and how fool- 
ish that error now seems ! Where men begin is 
one thing ; to what they come is another. Ori- 
gins are nothing ; ends are everything. In the 
light of the end the beginning is transformed, as 
the fire of sunset sometimes sweeps backward 
and transfigures the east. The full-grown man 
shows the differentiating soul that lived in the 
infant that seemed but a bundle of animal wants. 
The full-grown man, in clear and serious recog- 
nition of moral ideals, in earnest and undis- 
couraged pursuit of them, strong with the ten- 
der strength of a great and wide-reaching love, 
carries the origin of life back into the heart 
of the Infinite. The man whom we select as 
hero, whom wise and good men delight to 
honor, who wins and keeps the confidence of 
the enlightened and the upright, differentiates 
the humanity that he wears from the animal 
order beneath him by the whole diameter of 
being. The harvest is the great discriminator ; 
the grain, the fruit from the garden and the 
orchard, the various products of the soil, are a 
kind of final judgment upon the character of 
the seeds and beginnings whence they came. 
They may look alike at the first ; at the last 
they are of widely different values and uses. 



28 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

Because man has an animal life, he is not there- 
fore in that order. Look toward the end, con- 
sider the full-grown Christian man, weigh the 
worth of his soul, and you will find it easy to 
believe in the unique origin, mission, and des- 
tiny of man. 

Perhaps the deepest words in the Parable of 
the Lost Son are these : " When he came to 
himself." He had gone away, far away from 
himself, he had gone into the life beneath him, 
where for a time he lost all memory of the exist- 
ence for which he was made, and where all vision 
of the heights above him and the world of love 
that he had left behind faded out. That could 
not last ; his nature was divinely made, and it 
could not permanently endure this outrage upon 
it. His shame, his want, his isolation, his suf- 
fering, was the clear note of his nobility. It was 
this that gave him no rest, that bred thought, 
that brought about the great return. " And 
when he came to himself," — until that was 
done, nothing of any avail could be attempted ; 
when that was done, all high things became pos- 
sible. Then the vision returned of his old home, 
his father's love, the possibility of reinstatement 
in it, at least of service in the order of his 
father's home ; then, and greatest of all, came 
the resolve : " I will arise and go to my father." 
When he came to himself, he returned to his 



THE HUMANITY OF GOD 29 

father, and when we come to our humanity, we 
come to our God. For an entire generation, 
scientists, scholars, thinkers, students of current 
literature, and reading men and women went 
away from themselves ; they dwelt with delight 
among the forms of life beneath them, biology 
was everything, anthropology was nothing, or 
only a branch of the great tree of life. So the 
sense died away of the august meaning of our 
human existence. So men and women became 
skeptical and hopeless. So the sublime beliefs 
of the world, and the high wisdom of suffering 
and aspiring genius, took on the character of 
noble fiction. There was nothing left but natu- 
ral history, as of the bee or the ant or the tiger, 
invested with a halo by the creative imagination 
of man. 

Parallel to this is the immemorial departure 
of man from himself. Of the path of selfishness 
it is still true that broad is the way and wide is 
the gate, and many there be who go in thereat. 
The standing sorrow and disgrace of our race is 
this immersion of man in the life foreign to him. 
Listen to an ape scraping a Stradivarius violin, 
and you have an image of what takes place when 
man adopts from the animal order unmodified 
the law of the survival of the fittest ; listen to 
an Ole Bull using the same instrument, and you 
have a suggestion of the way in which the harsh 



30 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

and terrible order beneath man is transfigured 
by man when his heart is full of love. Men 
borrow the maxims of the brute for the regula- 
tion of much in life, — domestic, commercial, 
political, and international. War is always the 
ape tearing discords out of the heavenly violin. 
Conflict of every kind, the unbrotherliness of 
man to man, is a departure from self. It entails 
sorrow, degradation, loss ; it brings with it in- 
evitably the ever feebler sense of the soul in man 
made for righteousness, and the soul in the 
universe that we call God. It comes to regard 
with ill-concealed contempt all spiritual beliefs, 
all spiritual institutions, all thoughts and forces 
that witness to the dignity of mankind. So far 
as I can discover, the only two doctrines that 
appeal to men and women who thus degrade 
themselves, who spend their strength in a vital 
slander upon the race to which they belong, are 
the doctrines of total depravity and of a salva- 
tion that is simply the dead lift of Omnipotence 
of a humanity, or elected portion of it, out of 
the gutter to which it has sunk. The number 
of rascals who have found these two doctrines 
credible and comfortable is, I believe, very 
great. 

The word to all is the old message : " Repent 
ye ; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand ; " re- 
turn to yourself, come again to your abandoned 



THE HUMANITY OF GOD 31 

humanity. Nowhere but here can you find God, 
nowhere but here can you see the meaning of 
human existence, nowhere but here can you 
behold the ideals that roof in the true Church 
like the starry order of a Syrian midnight. Come 
back to the sense of relation to your kind ; come 
back to the social order in which you have been 
placed, and there acknowledge duty, behold the 
standard of it in Jesus Christ, and bend yourself 
to obedience. Then, finding your own human 
soul, you will surely find God. 

Look at Jesus. Consider him simply as the per- 
fect man. There is no higher name than that. 
The language of the creeds seems unreal in the 
presence of his spotless and sublime humanity. 
We gain one or two glimpses of his childhood, 
and how full of wonder and beauty it is ! We 
have one clear glance into his boyhood, and we 
mark the thirst for knowledge, the reverence for 
authority, the flow of deep questions, and the 
high spirit that fill it with grace and charm. 
When we see him again, he has become a man, 
he has risen into the consciousness of his Father 
in heaven, into the consciousness of his Sonhood 
to God. We see him at the Jordan, accepting 
baptism as the sign of the new world that has 
risen into clearness in his soul. We follow him 
into the wilderness, and watch him under his great 
temptation. In trial he is so patient, so strong ; 



32 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

and out of trial he comes so pure and mighty. 
We hear his teaching, we listen to his parables, 
we go with him in his errands of mercy, and try 
to count his countless acts of compassion and 
healing. We retire with him for prayer, we come 
again with him to the solemn business of living. 
We keep close to him while the great misun- 
derstanding concerning him grows blacker and 
blacker, we are with him in the heart of the 
awful tragedy. We watch the supremely good, 
apprehended, tried, condemned, and crucified as 
the supremely bad, and in it all we behold com- 
prehension so clear, pity so absolute, strength 
so victorious. This is man at his highest; this 
is our humanity carried to its best. This is the 
glory of human history. Nothing is wanting 
here that the wise and noble mind can ask for ; 
everything is here that should be present in 
human character. And it is this perfect human 
reality that gives to Jesus Christ his unique 
influence over men, that lends to his character 
its endless interest for men. You may call him 
divine or semi-divine, God or the Son of God ; 
these are names, significant for some, insignifi- 
cant for others. What you must note is that 
the sovereign soul of Jesus is his humanity ; that 
is the reality, that is the truth of his being. 
Human nature, the greatest thing that we know, 
becomes in him the highest and best. 



THE HUMANITY OF GOD 33 

The method of approach to God in the text 
implies an ascent through man to God, and also 
a descent of God in man. 

1. There is the ascent through man to God. We 
survey all things that we know, all forms of life 
that we know ; we survey man. We know that 
we are bounded by the infinite as some island 
might know itself bounded by a shoreless sea. 
We know ourselves as living in the infinite, as 
this planet might know itself as living in the in- 
finite spaces. We long to be able to reach and 
read the character of the Eternal. We look at 
all things, at all forms of life, as expressions of 
the Eternal ; we look at man. Shall we construe 
the character of the Eternal by what is lowest or 
by what is highest, by the beast of prey or by 
the apostle of love, by cosmic hostilities to man 
or by the human heart, by the mystery of pain 
and death or by the glorious epoch of sacrifice 
and gladness in history, by what is darkest and 
most terrible or by what is most luminous and 
most precious ? 

If God is wholly like the cosmic hostility to 
man, if He is wholly like the beast of prey, how 
could there flow from Him all the gentleness and 
beauty of the world ? If He is dark and cruel, 
if He is loveless and pitiless, how could He have 
made the human heart ? If we say that He is 
dark and cruel, we can no longer hold Him to 



34 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

be the Maker of noble men ; if we hold Him 
as the wise and good, we find in Him the Author 
of our human love, and if we cannot reconcile 
his love with other things that we see, we can 
wait until more light shall arrive. If we read 
God's character in the light of the lowest order 
of life, we have nothing in Him to account for 
man ; if we read God wholly by the highest, we 
fail to reconcile the forms of cruelty with his 
character. But the future may make all this 
plain. 

Now this ascent to God through man receives 
its highest expression in Jesus Christ. There is 
nothing in God to account for Jesus unless God 
is love ; there is nothing in all the universe to 
account for Jesus unless at the heart of the uni- 
verse there is a love equal to his. The cause 
must equal the effect ; Jesus is not self-created, 
he points backward to his origin in the Eternal. 
In accepting Jesus in his full humanity, we rise 
to a God who is equal to the task of creating 
such a being as Jesus, and we are justified in 
holding that our God is as good, as kind, as 
inexhaustible in compassion and hope for man 
as Jesus was. A God as good as Jesus ; that 
we obtain by the method of the text ; that result 
is the illumination and consolation of human 
history ; for a better than Jesus we do not need, 
a better than he we cannot conceive. 



TUE HUMANITY OF GOD 35 

2. This ascent through man to God implies 
a previous descent of God in man. If we can 
find God through man, it is because God lives 
in man. In man's passion for truth, in the laws 
of his intellect that guide him in his search for 
truth, and in the intellectual integrity that is 
his dearest mental possession, God has set up 
his order. In man's passion for righteousness, 
in the laws of his conscience and will that lead 
him on in the attainment of righteousness, in 
the sincerity and chastity of heart that is his 
most precious moral possession, God has again 
set up his order. In man's passion for beauty, 
in his wonder and joy in its presence, in his 
consolation and hope as he beholds the beautiful 
aspects of the universe, and in his sweet oblivion 
as he stands in the vision of beauty, God again 
reveals his order. In the heart of man as lover, 
parent, son, friend, citizen, in the great and 
constant tides of affection, in the sincerities, 
loyalties, endearments, and most holy ardors of 
the soul, God has made an amazing disclosure 
of himself. In Him we live and move and have 
our being, as the bird in the air, as the fish 
in the sea, and in us God lives and moves and 
has his being, as the air in the lung of the fish 
and of the bird, as the living fire of a living 
universe burns in the blood of everything that 
breathes. In the structure of the intellect, in 



36 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

the plan of the conscience, in the order of 
aesthetic feeling, and in the outgoings of the 
human heart, God dwells. The kingdom of God 
is indeed within you, the King is within you, 
our God is Immanuel. 

Here again in Jesus we see the great revealer. 
There is the intelligence of Jesus. We are be- 
ginning to understand something of its range, 
richness, depth, originality, and, better still, its 
absolute integrity. Men are more and more 
thankful for the comprehension, the calmness, 
the confidence, and the perfect sanity of the 
mind of Jesus. His thinking is a new intima- 
tion of the Sovereign Mind ; it is self-conscious, 
self -directed, perfectly normal, and yet there is 
in it the inevitable hint of the power of the In- 
finite, such as one gains from the approach of 
morning or evening. In sunrise and sunset, in 
the ebb and flow of the tides, in the coming and 
going of the great constellations, in the whole 
cosmic order and movement, we recognize the 
power of the Eternal ; and in the intelligence of 
Jesus, in its wide, wise, conclusive, and benign 
operation, there is the intimation of God's pre- 
sence. 

We come with awe to the conscience of 
Jesus. He holds the world to the highest stand- 
ard ; he is boundless in compassion, and yet he 
will rest in nothing but righteousness. God is 



THE HUMANITY OF GOD 37 

to him the righteous Father ; righteousness is 
the burden of his greatest discourse, the right- 
eousness in man that beholds and that tries to 
reproduce the righteousness of God. The moral 
nature of Jesus is incomparably great ; the moral 
universe that lives in the conscience of Jesus is 
the sublimest possession of mankind. And here 
there is even a stronger suggestion of Another. 
You open a letter that has come to you from 
afar, and in the familiar characters you see a 
soul ; the letter is not complete in itself, it is 
a message to one soul from another. You look 
at the picture of some dear friend ; the picture 
calls up the reality that it represents. You hear 
the voice of a friend, full of melody and tender- 
ness, and you think of the rich and tender 
heart whose beat is in that awakening and con- 
soling voice. Now just as that letter, that pic- 
ture, that voice, is incomplete in itself ; just as 
it brings in the vision of another, so the con- 
science of Christ in its order, in its sublimity, 
and in its instinctive and unerring action, brings 
in the vision of God. 

There is in Jesus the sense of beauty. We 
have noticed all too slightly and slowly this 
aspect of his character. His receptivities are 
fitted to the loveliness of the universe ; the 
spirit of beauty in nature passes into his being 
and lives in his entire manner of thinking and 



38 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

speaking. His parables are bathed in the fresh- 
ness and charm of the morning; his words 
carry in them the reflected color and tone of 
beautiful things, as the bird carries in its plum- 
age the burning mystery of light. The soul of 
Jesus is alive to all beauty, — sea, mountain, 
wilderness, the lilies of the field, the birds of 
heaven, the singing industries and cheerful ways 
of men, the sun that shines equally on the evil 
and the good, the rain that falls alike on the 
just and the unjust. In this vision in which his 
soul so often found rest, in which he so often 
met God, we meet God. God is within him in 
this wondrous capacity, in this wondrous expe- 
rience. The beauty of the Lord our God is 
within him and upon him. 

There is the heart of Christ. Who may 
speak of that ? Ask the little children who can 
never forget his face as he took them in his 
arms and blessed them, the mothers who came 
to him when in deepest anxiety, the centurion 
who appealed to him for his son, the centurion 
who besought him for his servant ; ask Mary 
Magdalene, whose distress he healed, whose self- 
respect he restored ; Peter, whose disloyalty he 
forgave, whose weakness he replaced with the 
strength of grateful love ; John, whose whole 
being he filled with a celestial passion ; the sis- 
ters in Bethany, whose joy and sorrow he trans- 



THE HUMANITY OF GOD 39 

figured ; the publicans and sinners, whose lives 
he redeemed from shame and despair ; the men 
who nailed him to the cross, over whom he 
prayed : " Father, forgive them, for they know 
not what they do ; " the penitent thief, who re- 
received from him as he entered the great mys- 
tery the immortal assurance : " To-day shalt thou 
be with me in Paradise ; " the soldier who stood 
guard under the cross, who saw it all, and who 
said : " Truly, this man was the Son of God; " 
— ask all these, and the multitude that no man 
can number whom they represent, what they 
think of the heart of Christ ! The answer rolled 
back with a voice like the voice of many waters 
and mighty thunderings must be : " The heart 
of Christ is the sanctuary of humanity, and the 
presence that fills it is the presence of the King 
Immortal, invisible, eternal, the only wise God, 
our Father in heaven." 

Science tells us of atoms and their motions, 
and the world is indeed a wonder as it is thus 
surveyed ; but we refuse to believe that this 
view leads in any way to a final account of 
being. Science tells us of force, that it is for- 
ever changing its form and forever remaining 
the same, boundless, perdurable, eternal, defining 
its life like Shelley's cloud : — 

" I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores ; 
I change, but I cannot die." 



40 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

but all the force of which we have any direct 
knowledge issues from intelligent will, and even 
this carried to infinity cannot account for our 
human world. "We read of the Eternal as King 
and Judge. Most true and most solemn are 
these designations of the reigning and judicial 
presence in the soul and in human history ; but 
we cannot allow the King and Judge to dim our 
vision of the Highest. The eye of the climber 
on the great mountain seeks the summit ; thither 
he tends, there and there alone can his nature 
rest. The vision of the beholder of God sweeps 
ever upward, past God in wood and stone, past 
God in the light of setting suns, in the wonder 
that invests all the spheres of life, beyond God 
in the law and order that express themselves in 
the lofty offices of king and judge ; the eye 
travels up to the utmost height of the moral 
being of God. There and there alone can the 
vision of God end in peace. The greatest thing 
that we know is man, the greatest man that we 
know is Jesus Christ ; and our worthiest thought 
of God regards Him as the God and Father of 
Jesus Christ. The humanity of God is given 
in the humanity of man ; it is given supremely 
in the humanity of Jesus. We ascend to God 
through man and his sovereign leader ; through 
man and his sovereign leader we receive God. 
This is our faith. Against the wild indifference 



THE HUMANITY OF GOD 41 

of the cosmos, the inscrutable mysteries of moral 
wrong, pain, and death, and the fearful inhu- 
manities of man to man ; in the presence of the 
worthy, in the presence of the Worthiest, we 
believe in the dear, eternal humanity of God. 



Ill 

MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 

" There came a man, sent from God, whose name was John." 

John i, 6. 

We speak of the twelve apostles, and we do well 
so to speak. We picture to ourselves these men 
going forth from Jesus, by the will of God, with 
a message for mankind. The picture is one of 
the loftiest, one of the most inspiring in human 
history. So much definiteness, dignity, scope, 
power, and permanent meaning enter the lives 
of these famous and happy men. 

But there is an earlier and broader apostle- 
ship. Here it is in John the Baptist. He pre- 
ceded Jesus ; yet he was an apostle. An apostle 
of whom ? God. An apostle for whom ? God 
in the service of Jesus. An apostle for what? 
That he might witness to his time of the High- 
est. And here in the apostleship of the Baptist 
we have the apostleship of humanity : " There 
came a man, sent from God, whose name was 
John." 

Was this the belief of his parents and kindred 
about the Baptist? Was it the belief of this 
biographer of Jesus, who had been, at one time, 



MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 43 

a disciple of the Baptist ? Or was it the belief 
of the Baptist about himself ? If the text em- 
bodies the opinion of his father and mother and 
kindred, it is interesting ; if it records the opin- 
ion of the author of the Fourth Gospel, it is still 
more interesting ; if it holds the conviction of 
the Baptist about himself, it is of the highest 
interest. Let us assume that this is the case, 
that the Baptist solemnly believed that he was 
a man sent from God. On the ground of this 
assumption we must ask several questions, and 
we must try to answer them. 

1. How did the Baptist reach his assurance of 
God ? How did he move into this consciousness 
of God ? How did he become clear and sure and 
serene about this infinite concern of the soul? 

He was born of religious parents. His home 
was a home of faith. His father and mother 
believed that all that came to them came by the 
will of the Highest. The boy was accustomed to 
this way of thinking. He was led to behold all 
things in God. He had been told that of all the 
good things that had come from God to his par- 
ents, he was the best. He himself had come from 
God. All life, all love, all great endowment, all 
high opportunity, all things in the world, except 
sin, had come from God. In this view of exist- 
ence the Baptist had been bred. 

It cannot be too often repeated that the loss 



44 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

of early religious training is a loss that can 
never afterward be made good. If indeed be- 
lief in God is a superstition, if it is indulgence 
in a mere dream, if it is the creation of reality 
out of the pious but foolish imagination, it is 
infinitely better to grow up without education 
in faith. But if there is any least probability 
that there may be something great answering 
to our thought of God, it is a loss unspeakable 
to miss habituation in that thought in our earliest 
years. For it was observed by a Greek philo- 
sopher, more than two thousand years ago, that 
the difference is not slight, but immense, and 
indeed of sovereign moment, whether one is or 
is not trained from earliest years according to the 
truth. The young mind, like fine wool, takes 
into itself forever the dye of great ideas. 

This son of priestly parents would be versed 
in the history of his people. He would come 
to know his nation as founded by Moses, as led 
by Joshua, as judged by Samuel, as ruled by 
David, as interpreted by Isaiah, as consecrated 
in the great Psalms, as pondered in the sublime 
mystery of its existence in the epic of Job. 
Here is a nation in unbroken association with 
God. Its history, as understood by those who 
made it, is a manifestation of God. Its origin, 
its great epochs, its great leaders, its great ex- 
periences, its vast hopes, are bound up with the 






MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 45 

belief in God. The nation is inseparable from 
this faith in God ; it is penetrated with the con- 
sciousness of his justice and mercy ; it lives and 
moves in Him as the planet lives and moves in 
the bosom of infinite space. This boy cannot 
read a page of national history without meeting 
the idea of God ; he cannot understand a char- 
acter or an event in that history without assum- 
ing the reality of God. As this boy absorbs the 
history, he absorbs the sense of God ; as he 
reproduces the best life of his race, he repro- 
duces their highest faith. 

Is there nothing here for us? Do the great 
epochs of history mean nothing for our time ? 
Do we not see in the origin of Christianity the 
involvement of the life of its Founder and the 
lives of his apostles with the being of God ? In 
all the teachings of Jesus, in all the conduct 
of Jesus, in all the sufferings of Jesus, in his life, 
and in his death, he is God's. How can we 
understand this man or his religion apart from 
the reality of God? How can we understand 
Christianity as a force in human history apart 
from the power of God in it ? 

Does the Reformation mean nothing on its 
spiritual side? The liberation that it wrought 
for the intellect we acknowledge; the freedom 
that it achieved for the spirit we confess. When 
Luther stands before the Diet of Worms and 



46 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

pleads for the life of reasonable manhood, when 
he there and then opens wide the iron gate that 
for a thousand years had kept the intellect of 
Europe in bondage, when he at a single stroke 
inaugurates the modern epoch with its free hu- 
manity and its vast hope, are we to detach this 
service from the idea that made it possible for 
the strong man to do his work ? It all came from 
the happy and triumphant sense of God. For 
Luther, God was in it all. The man who did this 
monumental deed believed that he did it by the 
inspiration of God. Does this count for nothing ? 
To many Cromwell's piety has seemed pure 
hypocrisy. Why? Because they desired no 
change ; because they were satisfied under Charles 
I ; because they did not revolt at tyranny ; be- 
cause they were without the aspirations of 
freemen. To others Oliver Cromwell means 
something great and noble. Here was a nation 
to be delivered. Here, as Milton said, was the 
people of England to be defended. Here was a 
system of despotism, controlling church and state, 
and standing like a monster with its heel on the 
neck of a great race. And here is Oliver Crom- 
well confronting all that. He cannot right this 
hideous wrong in his own strength. He can do 
it only in the strength of the Lord of Hosts. 
The deed is done, the nation is freed, the new 
epoch of English democracy is inaugurated, and 



MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 47 

Oliver Cromwell says it is the Lord that hath 
done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Is 
no respect due to the consciousness of the man 
who brought about this vast and wholesome 
revolution ? To him God was wisdom, power, and 
triumph ; shall He be to us only the pure dream 
of a strong man ? 

When in the Continental Congress meditating 
great things the chaplain is called, and the whole 
assembly joins in prayer to Almighty God, when 
out of this mood begotten by faith and worship 
there issues the manhood that makes, that sup- 
ports, that forever establishes the Declaration of 
Independence, are we to accept the gift of a 
nation born in the sense of God, defended in 
the consciousness of God, educated into strength 
by men who confessed that God is the final 
refuge of afflicted peoples, and are we to reject 
or regard as weak, or vain, or empty the solemn 
feeling for the Eternal in which the country 
lives ? When we read Abraham Lincoln's Sec- 
ond Inaugural, when we hear the man speak 
who had done most, who had suffered most, that 
this nation might continue one and indivisible, 
are we not moved in sympathy when he lays 
bare the foundations of his mind as a mind rest- 
ing in God, built up out of God, filled with the 
consolation and hope that faith in the Highest 
alone can bring to man ? 



48 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

But this Hebrew boy came yet nearer to the 
great mystery. He became a man. He found 
within himself the war between desire and duty, 
between the flesh and the spirit, between the 
high moral ideal and the baser passions of his 
being. Here in his mind is the sublime image 
of what he ought to be. That image is his ideal. 
It lays upon him the obligation to become a just 
and good man. Here are his passions. They care 
nothing for the just and good life, they want 
only their own gratification. And here is the 
youth conscious of this war in his being. Here 
he stands, looking toward his ideal with honor in 
his eyes, with strong resolve in his heart ; there he 
is sore beset, baffled often, turned back, brought 
almost to despair by his sense of weakness. He 
finds himself as far behind his ideal as when in 
awe and in tears he first beheld it rise in his soul. 
His moral career is arrested. He is unable to 
advance, the hope of his conscience begins to 
fade. He is unable to become the man that he 
yet knows that he ought to become. Here he 
returns to God. He tests the reality of his faith. 
He opens his nature to God. More and more he 
lives and moves and has his being in the con- 
sciousness of God, and he comes forth clad with 
conquering power, free, joyous, able to follow in 
the fiery path of his flying ideal. 

Has the youth of to-day no such experience? 



MAN TUE APOSTLE OF GOD 49 

Has he not his high moral ideal ? Has he not 
his contrary winds, his opposing passions ? Are 
not his resolves often broken in defeat ? Are not 
his efforts often rewarded with despair? Who 
can give him the victory over himself ? Who can 
enable him to become a just and good man? 
Who can give him a pure heart ? Who can fill 
him with reverence and tenderness in the pre- 
sence of human life ? He tries the old faith. He 
puts to the test the thought of God. He does it 
like a man, deeply, devoutly, persistently, with 
the whole energy of his nature. He puts himself 
under the sway of the thought of God. Look at 
his face ; it is not the same face. Look at his 
character and note its strength. Look at his ex- 
perience and mark its growing harmony. Look 
at his life and behold the freedom, power, and 
joy of it. This man has found God, like Jacob 
of old. He has wrestled with God for the con- 
servation of the ideal, for the reconciliation 
of duty and desire, and he has prevailed. He has 
gone forth with the blessing of the Eternal upon 
his invigorated and prevailing spirit. He cries 
with the energy of the apostle, " I know him 
whom I have believed." Again he cries, " That 
which we have heard, that which we have seen 
with our eyes, that which we beheld, and our 
hands handled," declare we unto you. The exi- 
gency of the spiritual life has made the faith of 



50 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

the ages, the faith of his fathers, his personal 
faith. For religion at second hand, he has re- 
ceived, through the moral struggle of existence, 
an original revelation, a personal vision of God. 

2. Our second question is this : How did 
the Baptist come to believe that he was sent of 
God ? Did this faith come to him all at once ? 
If it came to him as a vision, was it not a vision 
that disclosed its meaning slowly? Did not 
doubts now and then assail him ? Was he not 
tempted at times to conclude that his existence 
was too mean and brief to sustain any high 
relation to the Eternal ? If it was a prevailing 
faith, a struggling and yet victorious belief, 
like the ship that holds on her way in spite of 
head winds and heavy seas and cloudy skies, 
how did he reach it? Was it a theory of life, 
a philosophy of his personal existence ? 

It was this. Like other men, he was bound to 
study himself ; like them, he was bound to find 
his special vocation. Like all true men, he was 
bound to relate his special vocation to the God 
in whom he believed, and to the higher life of 
the people whom he served. As he became the 
object of his own thought, as his nature stood 
in the vision of his own intelligence, he saw that 
his special vocation was that of a preacher of 
righteousness. This was the thing for which he 
was best fitted ; this was the work to which his 



MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 51 

strongest desires led him. And this task of pro- 
claiming the fundamental interest for his race 
of righteousness related him as servant to the 
righteous will of God. He went to his task. He 
gave himself to it. He suffered for it in a thou- 
sand ways. More and more he took refuge in 
the Almighty righteousness. Here he found his 
message, and here he was clothed with power 
to declare it. He came to see that here lay the 
highest significance of his existence in this world. 
He was sent forth from the Eternal conscience 
with a message to the conscience of his race. 

No believer in God and in the tremendous 
moral ' need of man can doubt that the Baptist 
was right in his high faith about himself. But 
how is it possible to believe that ordinary per- 
sons are, in any true sense, apostles of God? 
How can we reach the consoling assurance that 
we are sent into this world on a high errand 
from God? 

We must ask what is the highest function, 
the chief end of man ? Is it simply to eat and 
to drink, and to-morrow to die ? Is man's essen- 
tial life one of sensuous enjoyment ? Is he ful- 
filling all the capacities of his being when he 
gathers food like the ant or bee, when he herds 
with his kind like the beasts of the field, when 
he organizes hhnself into a society for purposes 
of trade and physical comfort, when he reads his 



52 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

own history as part of the animal life of the 
world, when he considers himself in purpose and 
conduct wholly in the power of pleasure and 
pain, and concludes that in origin, career, and 
destiny he is altogether of this world, a mere 
creature of space and time ? 

No believer in God can accept this account 
of human existence. Man has a supreme end. 
That supreme end, according to an ancient phi- 
losopher, is activity in the line of the highest 
excellence. That activity at length carries the 
mind upward where, in rare moments, it can 
share the beatitude of the Eternal mind. Ac- 
cording to the old catechism, man's chief end 
is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. 
These definitions call up a range of experience 
of which all true men are conscious. The deepest 
need of man is the need of a sound mind and a 
clean heart. The deepest need of society is the 
same. The sound mind and the humane heart, in 
the industrial sphere, in the social realm, in the 
world of politics, in the vast and complicated 
life of mankind, would issue in a new heaven 
and a new earth. 

In our final account of ourselves we find that 
we stand face to face with the vocation of the 
Baptist. What was his special vocation turns 
out to be our final vocation. Our last, our 
supreme interest is in righteousness. If we are 



MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 53 

lovers, our love must be filled with rectitude ; if 
we are husbands and wives, our existence in that 
august relation must be under the dominion of 
righteousness ; if we are fathers and mothers, our 
privilege must be fired with the sense of duty. 
For what can be said in honor of parents, if 
they fail to train their children in moral power, 
if they fail to set them in the centres of moral 
influence, if they do not give them the sense of 
the transcendent worth of clean hands and a 
pure heart? If we are related to one another 
as masters and servants, our fundamental inter- 
est is still righteousness. In that great relation 
the final question is this: Are we just in it? 
Are we faithful as servants? Are we humane 
as masters ? And when we come to politics, we 
shall not differ. If there is any one thing for 
which above all other things the statesman 
should stand, it is righteousness. The states- 
man cannot, perhaps, avoid mistakes. He may 
not always be able to see the thing fittest and 
best. And here good men may differ and differ 
widely. But the purpose should be straight, the 
aim should be true. This is the deepest lesson 
in the career of Mr. Gladstone. He made many 
mistakes. He saw them, and like a man he con- 
fessed them with regret. And yet he held, and 
could truthfully hold, that his eye had been single. 
By those who differed from him, no less than by 



54 THBOUGH MAN TO GOD 

those who agreed with him, it was confessed 
that here was a great Christian statesman. His 
vocation as a politician was national, interna- 
tional, human righteousness. 

What, then, is our conclusion ? That the last 
and highest intention of our being is that we 
become wise in mind and sound in heart ; that 
man becomes man by dealing justly, loving 
kindness, and walking humbly with God. Here 
is the final meaning of our being, — a society of 
men living in righteousness. And in the service 
of this solemn end, all true thoughts, all ex- 
alted feelings, all high endeavors, are subject to 
the inspiration of God. As one purposes in his 
heart to be just and to help to make the world 
just, he entertains God's thought concerning 
him when God created him. This man becomes 
more and more inspirable under God as the poet, 
true to his poetic gift, becomes more and more 
inspirable under the appeal of nature and under 
the vision of humanity. We know that we are 
sent from God because God is a righteous God, 
and because the supreme and endless interest of 
man is righteousness. We come from God to 
repeat, as far as we may, in the fields of time 
the eternal righteousness. As the needle in the 
compass turns toward the pole, as it knows its 
function however wide and wild and lonely the 
sea may be, as it keeps in all zones and in all 



MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 55 

seasons, and in all the vexed courses of its life 
the sense that it is a witness to a greater than 
itself, so man trembles toward the Infinite. 
When true to himself, he knows, in all gales of 
passion, on every sea of interest, on the bound- 
less stormy ways of ambition, on the shoreless 
human meanings of home, industry, citizenship, 
and racial fellowship, that he was made to tes- 
tify of another, a mightier, a juster, and a 
kinder than himself. The vocation of the mag- 
netic needle is to point toward the pole; the 
vocation of man is to bear witness to God. 

3. What did the Baptist mean by his apostle- 
ship? This is, after all, the deepest question. 
We must not linger long among words ; we 
must go to the realities which they represent. 
We must descend into the world of meanings. 
There is the home of the intellect, there is the 
inspiration of the heart. 

We may well believe that this great man saw 
clearly that only a moral being can reveal the 
moral God. If the Supreme Being were power 
and only power, the cosmos would be a mightier 
apostle of the Infinite than man. If the Eternal 
were power and wisdom and no more, again the 
heavens would declare his glory, and the firma- 
ment would show his handiwork, as man could 
not. But if we do not reach the core of the 
Eternal until we come to his conscience, until 



56 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

we touch his love, then not nature but man, not 
the cosmos but humanity, is the great apostle of 
his being. In the order that on the whole favors 
the good, and that goes against the evil, in the 
law that ordains that the wicked shall perish 
from among men, and that the meek shall in- 
herit the earth, there is indeed one great witness 
to the conscience of the Most High. Even this 
witness is a witness through society. Besides, it 
leaves us at the threshold of the vast subject. 
And other similar observations lead little nearer 
the heart of the matter. 

It is undeniable that only a moral being can 
mediate a moral God. If God is spirit, if He is 
both hidden in the order of the universe and an 
infinite excess of goodness over and above that 
order, where is the path for this lightening of 
the Divine love, if man is not ? Only the intel- 
lect of man can discover and declare the thoughts 
of God; only the conscience of man can behold 
and reveal the conscience of God ; only the heart 
of man can receive and proclaim the love of 
God; only the moral will of man can apprehend 
and utter the moral power of God. God as 
might, as wisdom and might, lives and speaks in 
the cosmos ; but God as a moral being lives and 
speaks only in a moral humanity. 

Can your home, ever so richly and artistically 
furnished, tell your guest the whole of your char- 



MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 57 

acter ? At best, there is in that home only a hint 
of your soul. Can your sweet canary bird, your 
faithful horse, or your devoted dog express your 
character? Can any thing or any creature below 
your own humanity reveal the essential truth 
of your spirit? Can any order of things, can 
any race of creatures, declare about you what 
your lovely child can declare? If you are to 
reach your friend by means of another, here is 
your Mediator. Here is the child that has lived 
in your mind, seen the honor of your conscience, 
rejoiced in the love of your heart, grown strong 
under the might of your character. That recep- 
tive, responsive, obedient, happy child can repre- 
sent you to your guest. That child can reveal 
your thought, interpret your honor, express your 
love, utter your strength and dignity. In that 
gracious filial revelation your guest beholds your 
soul. This universe is God's house. It is ordered 
in an infinite profusion of great and beautiful 
things. It is crowded with countless races of 
living creatures. The things and the creatures 
may tell us wonderful stories about the house 
whose builder and maker is God. But the soul 
of our Eternal host, the inmost character of the 
Infinite, can be told to man only by man. Only 
the men who live in the thought of God, who 
behold the moral integrity of God, who dwell in 
the consciousness of his loving-kindness, who 



58 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

rise up into strength under the inspiration of 
his spirit, — only they can reveal the intellect, 
the conscience, the heart, the deep soul, the 
eternal humanity of our God. God speaks in 
the stone, but not to it ; God declares himself in 
the animal world, but not to it ; God reveals his 
soul in man, and He reveals it to man through 
man. 

Think of the man who went down from Jeru- 
salem to Jericho. That wild road has little to 
say about the God and Father of men. The 
robber who beats the wayfarer, strips him, and 
leaves him half dead, seems a not too severe 
representative of the wild and pitiless nature 
that looks upon him in his distress. The priest 
and the Levite again remind him of the utter 
sphinx-like indifference of the cosmos to man's 
need and man's agony. The good Samaritan 
changes the horror into joy. He speaks and acts 
for something in the universe like himself, but 
infinitely higher. In that wild path, in that 
tragic scene, he is the only speaker for the God 
of love. That lonely and perilous road is the 
path of mankind from the cradle to the grave. 
There is no God in this modern descent from 
Jerusalem to Jericho till the good Samaritan 
comes upon the scene. Our good Samaritan 
undoes the atheism of limited and helpless 
nature, the atheism of the brutal robber, the 



MAN THE ArOSTLE OF GOD 59 

atheism of the scornful and indifferent priest 
and Levite. He reveals through his own just 
and humane soul the just and humane soul of 
God. 

Here we see the central meaning of the career 
of Jesus. Jesus stands for a method of reve- 
lation and its ideal use. The supreme path of 
God is through the humanity of Jesus ; the per- 
fect humanity of Jesus supplies the ideal path. 
This is the heart of the Gospel. God who in 
sundry times and in divers maimers spake unto 
the fathers by the prophets hath in these last 
days spoken unto us in his son. The humanity 
of the prophets leads to the humanity of Jesus, 
as the foot-hills lead to ever higher ranges till 
the sovereign summit is at last reached. The 
path to God has ever been to man through man. 
Jesus takes this universal and immemorial 
method of God in speaking to men, lifts it to 
an ideal use in his own career, bequeaths it to 
his disciples, and calls upon them to become, as 
he had been, the light of the world. 

Think of the splendor of our humanity ac- 
cording to this faith. We speak of the cathedral 
window. We speak of its richness in color, of 
its variety and majesty in figure. But the win- 
dow is only glass, made of sand and seaweed, 
dust and ashes, lifted into coherence, curiously 
wrought, yet with one great redeeming capacity. 



60 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

It is so made as to become a prism for the light. 
In the unfolded glory of the light it lives ; in 
that unfolded glory it glows and burns with its 
hundred fires and hues. In the light whose 
heart it opens there is the distinction and dignity 
of its existence. That is humanity. It is of the 
earth earthy. It is made of flesh and blood. It 
is of the animal order, but not wholly so. It is 
born to die, and yet it holds within itself a 
transcendent capacity. It stands in the great 
flood of light that falls from the Creator upon 
his universe. It becomes the prism for that 
light. What is but pale common light as it falls 
upon things and upon creatures, becomes in man 
the ruby of love, the gold of truth, the blue of 
an eternal tenderness, the thousand glorious 
colors and gracious tints of the heart of our God 
who is the Father of lights. To stand in God as 
the window stands in the sunlight, to reveal God 
in our moral character as the window reveals 
the light, here is the mission, here is the splen- 
dor, of man. 

There is, however, a solemn side to this privi- 
lege. Where there is no sense of God, it is not 
the cosmos, it is not the wild beast, that is to 
blame ; it is the man who has become as mechan- 
ical as the cosmos, as merciless as the wild beast. 
For the revelation of the moral Deity the cosmos 
was not commissioned, the wild beast was not 



MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 61 

sent. The human soul alone can give us the 
human God. And where man fails in love, God 
fails in revelation. Usually, therefore, atheism 
and lovelessness go together. The loveless heart 
sees in itself no evidence of God ; the loveless 
heart in a pitiless society sees no evidence any- 
where of a Father in heaven. Should love and 
pity die out of humanity, all high evidence of 
God's being will also die out of humanity's 
thought. Oh, the atheisms that are due to the 
failure of men in kindness one to another, to 
the failure of men in their own love and pity to 
suggest, to reveal, the love and pity of God! 
Deal justly, love kindness, and walk humbly 
with thy God. Justice comes first, not because 
it is the more fundamental excellence, but be- 
cause it opens the door into the temple in which 
it is transfigured. Kindness comes second, not 
because it is inferior to justice, but because it is 
nearer to God, because it makes human rectitude 
a finer thing, and fits it for the utterance of 
God made possible through fellowship with God. 
Here is the solemn lesson to the Church. 
The Church is a society of Jesus. It is a society 
formed for the expression of the spirit of Jesus, 
that the sense of the God and Father of Jesus 
Christ may continue in the world. The world 
cries, " Where is thy God ? " What does that 
cry mean ? It is a demand upon the Church. It 



62 THROUGH MAN TO GOB 

asks, Where is your spiritual mind, your enlight- 
ened conscience, your sympathy, your compas- 
sion ? Where is your enduring kindness ? Where 
are your good deeds, your devout and devoted 
lives ? Only through these can we keep God 
for ourselves ; only through these can we give 
the sense of God to the world. The only avail- 
ing evidence for a spiritual God is the spiritual 
life of the children of God ; the only adequate 
witness for the humanity of God is the kindness 
of those who believe in Him. 

Our world is a kind of colossal feudal castle. 
It is in its substance matter ordered, matter 
built into form, stone and lime wrought into a 
vast structure, holding within itself indeed the 
design of its Maker, but providing at first only 
chinks and holes and no windows for the Eternal 
light, the Infinite spirit who is other and more 
than the realm of nature. In this natural world 
we build a human world. On this colossal feu- 
dal castle our Master built the tower that stands 
forever in the open day. Thither men go up for 
the vision of God. The true disciples of Jesus 
open windows in the great structure ; the succes- 
sion of disciples means a succession of windows. 
The issue of this succession is man in the reveal- 
ing power of his humanity standing in the heart 
of nature ; the old castle thus becomes the 
enduring framework for the countless windows 



MAN THE APOSTLE OF GOD 63 

that have been set in it. The order of the cosmos 
is the frame for a new and a translucent human- 
ity. Human goodness is the terrestrial prophet 
of the goodness of God. 

But if goodness builds windows through which 
God may shine upon men, wickedness, inhuman- 
ity, puts in the place of the window the wall 
of stone. Here one sees the tremendousness of 
an unkind life. It shuts God out of the world. 
It reduces man to the level of the cosmos. 
The mechanism and the pitilessness of physical 
nature claim and consume our humanity as the 
lean kine in Pharaoh's dream devoured the fat 
kine. And when the distinctive world of man is 
gone, God is gone ; when you have destroyed the 
army of finite lovers, you have banished the Infi- 
nite lover ; when you have degraded man to the 
level of the animal, you have abandoned the hope 
of a translucent society turned toward the 
Eternal light, you have broken all the windows 
in your colossal feudal castle, you have filled the 
vacant spaces with the opaque and unreveal- 
ing stone. The hope of a continuous witness for 
the Eternal love stands or falls with the hope 
of a race putting itself more and more under 
the dominion of love. The society of lovers is 
the kingdom of God; the kingdom of God is the 
great human witness for God. 



IV 
PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 

" Jesus saith unto him, I am . . . the truth." 

John xiv, 6. 

The deepest question ever put to Jesus was put 
by Pontius Pilate. Even if he did not stay for 
an answer, even if he spoke in jest, Pilate, when 
he framed his great question, became for one 
supreme moment the representative of humanity. 
And it is profoundly interesting that not from a 
Jew, nor from a Greek, not from a believer in 
special revelation, nor from an upholder of the 
insight of reason, but from a Roman politician 
came the great demand : What is truth ? That 
the demand is a human demand appears with 
extraordinary impressiveness when we see it issu- 
ing from the damaged humanity of a man like 
Pilate. We are not surprised when we hear Job 
sighing : " Oh that I knew where I might find 
him ! " We expect the just and the good to 
seek after God. When we hear the same vast 
sigh upon the lips of weak and sinful men, we 
are amazed. Nicodemus the Pharisee and Zac- 
cheus the publican both seek Jesus ; they seek 
him that they may find the Highest. Facts like 



PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 65 

these lead us to a deeper knowledge of man. 
They compel us to believe that our race in its 
error and sorrow is in movement upon great 
ends, that it is, oftenest indeed by the path of 
tragic mistake, in quest of God. We cannot 
deny this when before our eyes, out of the mire 
of a vulgar and vicious life there bursts the 
fountain of clear aspiration. " My soul is athirst 
for God." That is the habitual language of the 
saint ; in supreme moments, that is the lan- 
guage of the depraved heart. Augustine, when 
he had won his freedom, did little more than 
repeat with new emphasis and with happier feel- 
ings the great discovery made in his bondage : 
" Thou hast made us for thyself, and we can- 
not rest until we rest in Thee." 

Something of the same kind of surprise is 
felt when we hear the ageless questions of phi- 
losophy upon the lips of children and youth, 
when we hear them in the words of men of the 
world. And this surprise is keenest when, as 
in the case of Pilate, the profoundest demand 
issues from a mind wanting in seriousness, in 
nobility, and in depth. It is the image of the 
sun that gives to the dewdrop its lustre ; it is the 
seriousness of human existence that gives dignity 
to Pilate. Even unworthy men stand to their 
race as the seolian harp to the wind. The poor 
crude nature, in moments of high visitation, 



66 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

gives utterance to the still sad music of human- 
ity. Was not Saul among the prophets, and 
Balaam ? A crisis in the history of a worthless 
character lifts it into an interpreter of univer- 
sal human need. The crisis in Pilate's life 
makes him for one moment the representative 
of man. 

We are not unfamiliar with the idea that truth 
and goodness belong together. That gospel was 
preached by a Greek philosopher four centuries 
before our era began. That great soul con- 
tended that no one. sins with his will. He held 
that the fountain of evil is tragic mistake, that 
men do wrong because they are ignorant. He 
declared that if they only knew the things 
that pertain to their peace, they would love 
righteousness and pursue it. And we have come 
to look upon this contention of the ancient seer 
as one of the great commonplaces of the spirit- 
ual life. Truth as wisdom and wisdom as truth 
are found nowhere except in the ways of honor ; 
in the paths of shame we meet only endless and 
hopeless error. So preach both the ancient 
Greek and the ancient Hebrew seer. 

But in the words of Jesus, which I have taken 
as my text, there is something more than this. 
Jesus says : "lam the truth." What does he 
mean? What is truth? In considering this 
question, let us move toward the sublime answer 



PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 67 

of Jesus through forms of expression with which 
we are familiar. 

1. We sometimes speak of truth as agree- 
ment of word with fact. We say that the tide 
is at the flood, that the day is at the morn, that 
the year is at the spring. Each of these state- 
ments is susceptible of comparison with fact. If 
what is said agrees with what is, there is the 
truth. 

Let us suppose that we are the witnesses of 
certain occurrences. A horse runs away on the 
Speedway and no harm is done ; a lion breaks 
out from the menagerie, leaps over a fence into 
a playground full of children and nurses, and 
no one is frightened ; a great building twenty 
stories high is on fire, all the occupants get out 
in safety, and although the entire building is 
destroyed, the contents of it are saved ; a pleasure 
yacht sails down Niagara River and over the Falls 
with no other discomfort than the sense of a rather 
heavy jolt in making the leap of the cataract ; the 
politicians of all parties meet and declare their 
enmity with one another upon every point of 
public policy, in terms of universal benevolence ; 
these politicians further declare that the doctrine 
that to the victors belong the spoils is in har- 
mony with the severest civil service reform. 
These are the reports ; they may or they may 
not be easy of belief . If, however, they corre- 



68 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

spond with the facts, they are true ; if they do 
not correspond with the facts, they are not true. 

Here truth means accuracy, and the great les- 
son is plain. An inaccurate mind is a danger- 
ous possession, and may easily enough become a 
calamity. It is true that the absurdly inaccurate 
mind has for mankind an unfailing charm, and 
it is turned by the miraculous touch of humor 
into a servant of life. Of a host of inaccura- 
cies and exaggerations it may be said that they 
are simply ludicrous ; they are nourishment for 
laughter. Their name is legion, and yet they 
may be recalled by the famous report concerning 
a prisoner who was sentenced to four months in 
the " House of Commons." 

The thing to be dreaded is the habit of inac- 
curacy in serious affairs. When the fact is the 
signal to stop to the engineer of an express, the 
identification of a coast light or headland by the 
master of a ship, the exact reading of a physi- 
cian's prescription by a chemist, the discernment 
of the path of the knife in the case of the sur- 
geon, we see at once the indispensableness of 
accuracy. When we think of the banking trans- 
actions of the country and regard them as an 
instance in illustration of the world of trade, we 
again see the essentialness of accuracy. When 
we visit our public schools and consider the 
subjects taught and the methods of teaching 



PERSONALITY AND TI1E TRUTH G9 

employed, we can think of no higher human 
necessity than the habit of an exact mind. 

Think what the habit of mental exactness 
would do for knowledge ; how it would dissolve 
the vast compound of fact and fancy, truth and 
superstition, that in every department of human 
interest goes forth under the august name of 
knowledge ; how this habit of exactness would 
generate in human beings the love of science. 
Science means exact observation, and exact judg- 
ment upon the things observed. Think how this 
habit would aid the process of civil justice. Few 
witnesses mean to lie; vast numbers of them are 
incompetent. Think how this habit would put 
an end to gossip. The accurate mind will refuse 
to repeat as fact what it knows to be only rumor, 
and it will refuse to aid in that circulation of 
rumor by which the mere guess of the gossip 
attains to baleful certainty. On his death-bed, 
John C. Calhoun said of Daniel Webster, his 
great antagonist in constitutional law : " Show 
him a fact in the path of his argument, and Mr. 
Webster is dumb." There could not be a higher 
witness to intellectual integrity. The fine thing 
about the guest who appeared without the wed- 
ding garment was that when confronted by the 
fact, he was speechless. 

How much damage to human feeling may come 
from the inaccuracy of man may be readily im- 



70 THEOUGH MAN TO GOD 

agined. " There came a messenger unto Job, and 
said, The oxen were plowing, and the asses feed- 
ing beside them : and the Sabeans fell upon them, 
and took them away; yea, they have slain the 
servants with the edge of the sword ; and I only 
am escaped alone to tell thee. While he was 
yet speaking, there came also another, and said, 
The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath 
burned up the sheep, and the servants, and con- 
sumed them ; and I only am escaped alone to tell 
thee. While he was yet speaking, there came also 
another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters 
were eating and drinking wine in their eldest 
brother's house : and, behold, there came a great 
wind from the wilderness, and smote the four 
corners of the house, and it fell upon the young 
men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped 
alone to tell thee." Now suppose these three mes- 
sengers mistaken ! They have caused by their 
blunder needless and nameless pain. Worlds of 
needless and nameless pain are rolled every day 
upon poor suffering mortals by the wretched in- 
accuracies and exaggerations of men and women. 
Our Gospel is a report ; is it an essentially ac- 
curate report ? That question has roused and in- 
flamed the intelligence of the world. In this day 
of universal and unsparing criticism, nothing 
that is inexact can stand. The modern world has 
set its heart upon accuracy. It is subjecting to 



PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 71 

the severest tests the inherited intellectual pos- 
sessions of mankind ; it is subjecting religions 
and the records of religions to the severest exam- 
ination ; it is subjecting Christianity and the re- 
cords of Christianity to the severest critical pro- 
cess. The modern world has come to believe with 
Socrates that the unexamined life is not worth 
living. It is therefore of infinite moment that 
the records of Christianity shall prove essentially 
accurate. It is the belief of those who know 
most on this point that the Christian record is 
substantially sound ; the reporters of Jesus were 
essentially accurate men; what they said abides 
after all the waves and billows of criticism have 
gone over it, because it is at heart a record 
of fact. There could not be a more impressive 
example of the peril of inaccuracy, or of the 
exceeding felicity of an accurate mind. In the 
light of it we can approve the sentence passed 
upon the London publisher who issued the 
Bible with the negatives left out in the Ten 
Commandments. His work was destroyed and 
he was sent to the Tower, not only for sacrilege, 
but also for inaccuracy. 

2. We sometimes speak of the truth as agree- 
ment of statement and thought. The comparison 
here is between what a man puts into words and 
what he holds in his heart. We recall here the 
exclamation of the Homeric hero : " I hate as 



72 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

the gates of hell the man who says one thing 
with his lips and conceals another in his heart." 
That is to the Homeric hero the ideal of an 
untrue man ; one whose words are in dead antago- 
nism to the thoughts and intents of his heart. 
We recall the Old Testament story of the treach- 
ery of Joab to Amasa : " And Joab said to 
Amasa, Is it well with thee, my brother? And 
Joab took Amasa by the beard with his right 
hand to kiss him. But Amasa took no heed to 
the sword that was in Joab's hand." Under 
the pretense of the most loyal friendship, Joab 
killed this man. The outward act was the act of 
a friend ; the inward thought was the thought 
of an assassin. Judas comes to the Garden of 
Gethsemane to betray Jesus. He has given a 
sign to the enemies of Jesus, who are not famil- 
iar with his personal appearance ; the man whom 
Judas shall kiss they are to apprehend, that 
man is their prisoner. Judas kept his promise, 
and as he advanced, Jesus recoiled from him 
with horror : " Judas, betrayest thou the Son 
of Man with a kiss ? " Dost thou employ the 
symbol of love as the cover for treason ? Thou 
appearest in conduct as my devoted friend ; in 
thought, in feeling, in premeditated deed, thou 
art my betrayer. And in all history there is 
nothing more odious than that. Here is lying 
reduced to a fine art ; falsehood taking the 



PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 16 

utmost pains to conceal its hideous features ; 
treachery stealing the livery of heaven. This 
awful contradiction, this black and hideous anti- 
thesis between the act and the mind of Judas, 
stands as the monumental lie of human history. 
Under it are gathered the unspeakable infideli- 
ties of domestic life, the glaring dishonesties of 
trade, the vile hypocrisies of social fellowship, 
the nameless corruptions that pollute the great 
word " patriotism," and the historic interna- 
tional treacheries against an afflicted humanity. 
We say of a poem, of a speech, of a philo- 
sophy, that it is true when it answers to the 
thoughts and feelings of the poet, the orator, 
the philosopher. Tennyson's " In Memoriam " 
is true because it is the genuine utterance of 
genuine feeling. Milton's " Samson Agonistes " 
is true because it is a faithful expression of 
Milton's mood at the time. Dante's " Divine 
Comedy " is true because he put his sincerest 
beliefs and convictions into this poem. Demos- 
thenes, when he spoke against Philip, Burke, 
when he pleaded for conciliation with America, 
and Webster, when he expounded the Constitu- 
tion, spoke the truth ; that is, they spoke their 
sincerest thoughts and beliefs. Hume and Kant 
are true philosophers because they both put in 
order their profoundest and most serious con- 
clusions; there is no contradiction, no discord, 



74 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

between the thought in mind and the thought 
in the book. 

Here the great lesson is sincerity, and in sin- 
cerity we touch another of the fountains of a true 
humanity. Indeed, without sincerity, great char- 
acter is impossible. What are all our orthodox- 
ies, if they do not represent the mind of the 
Church to-day ? They are a vast construction of 
falsehood. What are all the great historic forms 
of faith in dogma, in hymn, in sacred oracle, in 
philosophic system, in the free utterance of liter- 
ature, if the spirit of to-day is not in accord with 
them ? David found that Saul's armor did not fit 
him, and therefore he refused to wear it. He 
went forth against the great enemy of Israel with 
the sling of the shepherd and the five smooth 
stones from the brook. It is of infinite moment 
that we should fight for the highest in this way. 
The first of all questions concerns what one holds 
in his heart as the truth. He must stand by 
that and by nothing else. It may be but a beam 
in the darkness ; if he is true to it, it will grow. 

Men conceal their real thought for many rea- 
sons. They conceal their real thought because 
the free expression of it may injure their pros- 
pects ; or because it may give offense to friends ; 
or because of personal weakness. These and all 
other reasons for the suppression of individual 
judgments are unworthy. The thoughts and in- 



PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 75 

tents of the heart are suppressed oftenest on 
account of weakness and dishonesty. The classic 
instance of suppression of judgment through 
weakness is Shakespeare's : — 

11 H. Do you see yonder cloud that 's almost in shape 
of a camel ? 

P. By the mass, and 't is like a camel, indeed. 
H. Methinks it is like a weasel. 
P. It is backed like a weasel. 
H. Or like a whale ? 
P. Very like a whale." 

An example of the suppression of real opin- 
ion likely to become classic is found in Kipling's 
44 The Truce of the Bear." On the one hand we 
have a Hague Convention for peace, and on the 
other an imperial policy of national aggrandize- 
ment supported by armed force. The hunter 
comes upon the bear : — 

" There was a charge in the musket — pricked and primed 

was the pan — 
My finger crooked on the trigger — when he reared up 

like a man. 

And my heart was touched with pity for the monstrous, 

pleading thing. 
Touched with pity and wonder, I did not fire then. . . . 
I have looked no more on women — I have walked no 

more with men. 
Nearer he tottered and nearer, with paws like hands 

that pray — 
From brow to jaw the steel-shod paw, it ripped my face 

away ! 



76 THROUGH MAN TO GOB 

Sudden, silent, and savage, searing as flame the blow 

Faceless I fell before his feet, fifty summers ago. 

I heard him grunt and chuckle — I heard him pass to his 

den. 
He left me blind to the darkened years and the little 

mercy of men." 

3. We sometimes remark that truth is the 
agreement of thought and fact. The mind of 
Copernicus is dominated by a certain image of 
the solar system. In the mind of this great man 
the sun is at the centre of the system, and the 
earth and its sister planets move in separate 
orbits and in nearer or remoter circles round the 
sun. This is the picture in the brain of Coper- 
nicus, and we believe that it answers to the solar 
fact. The mind of Darwin is controlled by the 
idea of the development from one kind of life 
of all the manifold varieties of existence now on 
this earth. The image is of an inverted pyra- 
mid, self-generating, self-building, spreading as 
it rises into the vast contrast which the base of 
this mighty inverted pyramid presents to its apex. 
This is the thought in the mind of Darwin, and 
many believe that it answers substantially to the 
biological fact. There is the history of Rome 
for fifteen hundred years, and there is Gibbon's 
mental picture of that history which he trans- 
fers to his book ; there is the Republic of Plato 
and the moral and social constitution of man ; 
there is the total moral order of the universe and 



PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 11 

the mind of Christ. Where the mental picture 
and the natural fact, the human insight and the 
moral order, the state of the mind and the state 
of the case, the interior world of thought and 
the exterior world of nature, agree, there we say- 
is the truth. When you read the parables of 
the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost 
Son, when you see how the owner in each case 
seeks his own and will not cease to seek it until 
he find it, and then learn that this is the 
feeling of Jesus toward erring humanity, you 
are ready for the question, Is this the way that 
God feels and acts toward men ? If this is the 
case, the parable is true ; it is an image in essen- 
tial agreement with the mind and heart of God. 
When you read further our Lord's parable of 
Dives and Lazarus, when you see the noble beg- 
gar after death in bliss and the royal rascal in 
torment ; when you ask if this represents the 
division of the good and the bad into separate 
worlds at death, into heaven and hell, you are 
ready for the question, Is this parable in essen- 
tial accord with the fact? If things there an- 
swer to this picture, then the parable is true. 
So we may reason of all perceptions, memories, 
imaginations, judgments, beliefs, and hopes ; if 
they agree with the independent order beyond 
them, they are true, if they do not agree with 
that order, they are false. 



78 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

Here truth means reality, independent of the 
will of man. Sincerity is essential, but it is not 
enough. There is an order of nature indepen- 
dent of human volition. Man can observe times 
and seasons, days and years ; but he cannot con- 
trol them. The world of science is infinitely 
fruitful because it is the perception of the world 
of nature; the teaching of Jesus is infinitely 
fruitful because it is the revelation of the moral 
world of man. One's thoughts, fancies, feelings, 
volitions, may be sincere ; the whole state of 
one's mind and the entire intent and content 
of one's heart may be without guile, but this will 
not save one, if one is not in accord with the 
order of the world. The law of gravitation is 
independent of man ; it exists, it operates, it 
rewards life and destroys life, whether perceived 
or unperceived, acknowledged or unacknow- 
ledged. The somnambulist who walks out of his 
window on the fourth story of his house meets 
the same fate with the deliberate suicide. Cya- 
nide of potassium will kill the man who takes it 
by mistake as quickly as the man who takes it 
knowing what it is. There is a physical order 
that we do not make, and that we cannot ud- 
make. 

Parallel to this is the independent moral order. 
There is the cosmic nature and its law of gravi- 
tation that must be honored ; there is the human 



PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 79 

nature and its moral law that must be honored. 
It is there by the decree of the Highest, and 
no weapon formed against it can prosper. The 
Lord's parable of the Two Builders touches life 
here. The foolish builder was as sincere as the 
wise builder ; he, too, wanted life, home, a safe 
dwelling, for the rich content of existence. He 
built sincerely, but he did not build in accord- 
ance with the moral order. He forgot that he 
lived in a searching universe ; he forgot that a 
covenant with the everlasting alone can save 
man. He made no provision against the rains 
that descended, the floods that came, and the 
winds that blew. His house fell, not because it 
was insincerely, but because it was foolishly 
built ; not because it was an evil device, but 
because it was not founded on reality. 

Carlyle speaks of " a soul too much based 
upon laughter." We cannot too often remind 
ourselves that we live in a universe of the ut- 
most seriousness ; that law in the realm of na- 
ture and in the sphere of the spirit is ultimate 
and implacable ; that good intentions cannot 
bring immunity from disaster, that, indeed, as 
the great poet saw, hell is paved with them ; that 
only the reverent and devout recognition of the 
independent and inviolable order of God without 
and within can give to a man a fruitful, progres- 
sive and secure existence. 



80 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

4. We sometimes speak of the truth under the 
form of personality. We speak of the true father, 
the true mother, the true friend, the true man. 
What do we mean ? We mean that a given per- 
son stands in a definite number of relations to 
his fellow men, and that in these relations he is 
invariably all that he should be, or he is in 
them in a very eminent degree what he should 
be. We look at an American like Abraham 
Lincoln, we mark him as son, father, friend, as 
lawyer, statesman, President, and we can say 
from the heart that in all these relations he is 
in an extraordinary degree what he should be ; 
he is a true man. 

This is the meaning of Jesus in the text. The 
truth is not a system of opinion ; it is a system of 
relations, and a man in them all that he should 
be. Jesus is son, brother, teacher, friend, citizen 
of Israel, servant of his people, prophet of God. 
This is the circle of relations in which he lives ; 
in them all he is all that he should be. He is the 
perfect man, and therefore he is the final form of 
the truth. 

Look now at some of the implications of this 
view of truth. According to this conception of 
truth, the sovereign force in the world is the per- 
sonal soul ; man is the ultimate reality in time. 
Color is but his vision ; sound is but his sensa- 
tion ; taste and smell are but his experiences ; 



PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 81 

the world upon which he builds and works and 
walks is but some Sovereign Will answering to 
his own. In the heart of this Will he lives ; 
within that Will all men and all things live. Yet 
in that Will the central reality known to us is 
the human soul. The world as vision, sound, 
taste, smell, touch, is carried on by the perennial 
race ; otherwise it would vanish when the soul 
vanishes at death, like the baseless fabric of a 
vision. The world as we know it is kept in being 
by man ; and what in it is more than man is but 
the Sovereign Will that answers to man's will. 

The soul that perceives, that remembers, that 
weaves its thoughts into strange devices, that rea- 
sons, that finds in itself the moral ideal, that is 
bound by that ideal to service and love, is the 
sovereign reality in this world of shadows. The 
capacity for discovering an ideal, for lifting it 
higher and ever higher, is among the great things 
in the human spirit. The incapacity for evading 
the sense of obligation when standing in any re- 
lation under the full light of the ideal, is among 
the greater things of the soid. The power by 
which the heavenly vision is entertained, pursued, 
overtaken, and put into the obedient will, the 
thankful heart, the well-ordered and beneficent 
life, is the greatest thing in man, and it is the 
greatest thing that we know. When we hear the 
Hebrew servant cry, How can I do this great sin 



&Z THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

against God ? we see youth possessed of a moral 
ideal, and we see that ideal sovereign in the will 
and conduct of its possessor. When we hear 
from the lips of the Christian apostle : " This 
one thing I do, forgetting the things that are 
behind, and stretching forward unto the things 
that are before, I press on toward the prize of 
the high calling in Christ," we see a soul pursu- 
ing a flying ideal as an eagle might fly in the 
fiery path of the retreating sun. The man is in 
movement through love and service offered to 
an infinite ideal. 

If we turn and look at the souls that have 
failed in obedience, at Judas in his remorse, at 
Peter in his tears, at Pilate washing his hands, 
at Richard Third alone in his tent the night be- 
fore the battle, at Lady Macbeth and the spots 
upon her hands, at the volcanic woe of the con- 
science face to face with its own shame, we learn 
again how profound, how abysmal, is the reality 
of the moral nature of man. 

" Which way I fly is hell ; myself am hell ; 
And, in the lowest deep, a lower deep, 
Still threatening to devour me, opens wide, 
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven." 

If we look at man in his sense of moral need, 
we see again how trivial all other things are com- 
pared with the reality of the soul. Look over the 
world, look into the hearts of suffering men and 



PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 83 

women, look into the conscience crazed with the 
sense of unworthiness and shame, and listen to 
the great modern interpreter of a moral human- 
ity as he puts into words the terrible, inarticulate 
moan : — 

" Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, 
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, 
Raze out the written troubles of the brain 
And with some sweet oblivious antidote 
Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff 
Which weighs upon the heart? " 

If to himself each man is the centre of all 
reality, next to this is the reality of his fellow 
men. We live in personal relations. We are 
souls, thinking, feeling, and acting one with an- 
other. We are moral realities, conscious spirit- 
ual forces, either at war with one another or at 
peace. Next to himself, man is to his brother 
the sovereign reality in the world. If he thinks 
honorably of his brother, if he feels kindly 
toward him, if he deals justly by him, his 
brother's soul comes to his with messages of joy 
and peace. See how these souls come to Jesus. 
They come out of the past. Moses and Elijah 
on the Mount of Transfiguration are symbols of 
the grateful dead that flock to Jesus to bless 
him. The sad, defeated, broken-hearted past be- 
comes victorious and glad in him. They rise at 
his side ; the souls of little children, of weary 



84 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

mothers, of publicans and sinners, of broken 
households that he has restored, all pour upon 
him their reverence and their gratitude. They 
come to his prophetic soul from the vast future. 
Millions of unborn spirits fly like doves to their 
windows, to empty into his the sacred thankful- 
ness of their lives. Thus, in his measure, the 
true man always fares. He is alone and yet not 
alone ; he reveres and serves the souls of men. 
The souls of men in one way or another testify 
to him who serves them their august reality. 
They testify by their gratitude and their most 
sacred trust. And if a man deals unjustly by 
man, how terrible the curse ! Robespierre's way 
to the guillotine is accompanied by the terrific 
imprecation : " Go down to hell with the curses 
of all wives and mothers." That cry of wild 
justice is a symbol of the scourging reality that 
man's brother becomes to him when he has out- 
raged his brother's humanity. His punishment 
is harder than he can bear ; the blood of the slain 
soul cried to the Infinite out of the ground. 
Both in benediction and in malediction we learn 
that we are persons in a vast moral fellowship, 
and that souls in moral fellowship are the ulti- 
mate reality of our world. 

We deal with our fellow men, and we deal 
with the Infinite. When we are at the height of 
moral being we whisper in profound est awe : — 



PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 85 

" Whither shall I go from thy spirit ? 
Or whither shall I flee from thy presence ? 
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there : 
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there. 
If I take the wings of the morning, 
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea ; 
Even there shall thy hand lead me, 
And thy right hand shall hold me." 

The Eternal is intelligible only as an " I," a 
personal Soul, a Being who entertains an infi- 
nite moral ideal, who has for it an infinite love, 
and who gives to it in his character an infinite 
fulfillment. Further, when we are at our best, 
the great realities of the universe are not atoms, 
nor elements, nor the combinations of atoms and 
elements that form things and stars and constel- 
lations, nor the vast aggregate of these that 
constitute the material universe as it lives in the 
vision and science of man; when we are at our 
best, the supreme realities are souls in fellowship 
for better and for worse, through weal and 
through woe, and in fellowship with the Eter- 
nal Soul that we call God. When we think 
clearly and at our best, the permanent core of 
the universe discloses itself as a fellowship of 
persons in the order of conscience and love, in 
the pervading presence and the comprehending 
being of the Eternal conscience and love. 

Jesus therefore spoke honestly and profoundly 
when he said, " I am the truth." Truth as ac- 



86 THROUGH MAN^ TO GOD 

curacy lived in him; never man so ordered 
his words to the facts of existence. Truth as 
sincerity lived in him; never man so moulded 
speech into the image of his thought. Truth as 
independent reality he confessed ; never man so 
recognized beyond him, about him, and above 
him the will of God. All these forms of truth 
were lifted into the ultimate and supreme form, 
— the personal soul. He stood to men in man- 
ifold relations, and in them all he stood just 
and merciful. He stood to God as Son, and he 
stood as the perfect Son. He acknowledged in 
the comfort of those who returned upon him 
for his services to them their thankful love and 
trust, and in the blind and brutal hatred of 
those who filled him with grief, the reality of the 
souls of his brethren. In his obedience and in 
his victory he knew and declared the reality of 
God. In his transcendent personal soul he is in 
time the truth of our human world, he is in time 
the truth of the universe. Henceforth, when we 
use the great word "truth," we shall not dwell 
among things or words or thoughts ; we shall 
rise to the sphere of character ; we shall look 
upon the face of saint, reformer, martyr, hero ; 
we shall apply the word to the soul that has 
stood in human relations for the highest. When 
we use the sublime phrase " the truth," we shall 
lift our vision to the perfect person, to the soul 






PERSONALITY AND THE TRUTH 87 

that stood toward men and toward God in ideal 
justice and love, and in an ideal service of justice 
and love ; and we shall look up through this 
divine personal mediator who is the truth of 
our human world to the personal God who is 
the truth of the universe. 



NATURE AND HUMANITY 

" And Jacob's well was there." 

John iv, 6. 

The well was there, a fountain from the heart 
of the earth, clear, abundant, beautiful, fit to 
represent nature in the whole range of its bene- 
ficent ministry to life. The grand total of forces 
other than human that we call nature lifts itself 
into the imagination as we think of this ancient 
well, as we sit beside it weary with the journey 
of existence and under the heat and burden of 
the day. 

This well, however, is not isolated and inde- 
pendent. It is not a nameless fountain. It is 
Jacob's well. It was dug by the father of a 
nation. The water is still held in the place 
that he made for it. It has an association with 
his career, ancient, pathetic, continuous, endless. 
Eachel in her beauty visits that well. The sons 
of Jacob, in youthful gladness and manly hope, 
gather round it every morning and evening. The 
flocks and herds come near it. The old man, in 
his shame and in his love, in his often unwor- 
thy and yet always strangely fascinating charac- 



NATURE AND HUMANITY 89 

ter, has stamped his humanity upon the well 
that bears his name. Nature comes before us in 
that well ; humanity comes before us in it. Hu- 
manity rebuilds the well, uses it, bequeaths it, 
through it enters into covenant with nature, and 
sets in the heart of nature's abiding order the 
fortunes of the human race. 

The Ampezzo valley in the Austrian Tyrol is 
a modern picture with the same meaning. En- 
circling the valley there are the enduring moun- 
tains. They are something in themselves. They 
were there before man ; they are primeval, ever- 
lasting. They surround and watch over the 
valley. Among their high places the clouds 
gather, blacken, and almost daily break in 
storms that drive as if they would destroy and 
desolate, but that only refresh and beautify the 
world upon which their fury is spent. Into this 
frowning and terrible order, touched with high 
restraint, is set man and his world. Nature be- 
gins to burn with humanity; humanity begins 
to covenant with and to go beyond nature. The 
green fields sweeping up the valley from the 
river-banks to the edges of the eternal rock, 
the response of the soil to the skillful and labo- 
rious hand of man, the human habitations that 
tell of man's triumph over heat and cold, the little 
village that speaks of the power of social fellow- 
ship, the church with its campanile in the centre 



90 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

of all that testifies of the thirst of the soul after 
the living God, — all repeat the same wonderful 
story, the obligation of man to nature, the obli- 
gation of nature to man, and his complete tran- 
scendence of nature in the range of his powers, 
in the vastness of his needs, in the purpose of 
his being, and in the consciousness of his union 
with God. In that valley, as in many another, 
we see the humanizing of all nature, the place of 
man in nature's stern order, and the spirit that 
on river and sea, on hill and plain, is forever an 
alien, creative, prophetic, alive with the moral 
image of God, and living up into his eternal life. 
I am to speak, therefore, of nature and humanity, 
at a few of their thousand points of intersection. 
1. There is first the dependence of nature upon 
man, and of man upon nature. Without man, 
what a strange ghost nature becomes ! We know 
that colors, sounds, tastes, and smells are due to 
human sensibility. We further know that hard- 
ness and softness, cold and heat, moist and dry, 
owe their character to our peculiar human organ- 
ization. When you strip from nature all that 
it is in consequence of its association with man, 
it is left as constant, invisible, sublime, eternal 
order, and no more. This is the boundless un- 
sheeted ghost, the infinite sightless and impal- 
pable order in which we live. When we take 
man out of nature, the outgoings of the morning 



NATURE AND HUMANITY 91 

and the evening are no more ; the glorious mir- 
acle of color is gone; the sounds that are the 
sphere melodies, the tastes that are zest to life, 
the freshness and the perfume of the rich earth, 
are vanished. AVe have left as nature, when man 
is gone, only the aboriginal, formless, viewless, 
eternal power. 

On the other hand, man apart from nature is 
helpless. He cannot breathe except in nature's 
air ; he cannot move except in her spaces ; he 
cannot subsist except on the food that she brings 
him ; he cannot appear to his brethren except 
in a body that has been built up out of her deep, 
mysterious stores. Apart from nature man dies, 
passes out of the fair world of time, leaves the 
smile of love behind him, ceases to speak to his 
brethren in the color and sound, in the whole 
varied and wondrous sensuous appeal of his kind, 
falls out of the ranks of visible human fellow- 
ship, withdraws into the world of spirit, fades 
into the eternal, dwells with God, and, until we 
join hini there, exists only for God. 

Again, nature comes to her best through man. 
The well is nature at her best at a single point. 
That eminence is bestowed by man. The story 
of the Garden of Eden is another illustration. 
Nature is improved by man's hand, improved 
in range and excellence of life, in richness and 
diversity of beauty. By the hand of man the 



92 THROUGH MAN TO GOB 

wilderness and the solitary place are made to 
rejoice. The hillsides of Italy and Switzerland, 
and the valley of the Nile, tell the story of the 
whole earth. Man's ideas and man's toil and 
man's life bring nature to her best. The wild 
rose is fair, but it is not to be compared for 
richness and beauty with the same flower lifted 
to perfection by man's care. So with fruits of 
every name. The landscape architect comes into 
nature with man. Even the ranges of nature 
untouched by man, inaccessible to man, are yet 
lifted into greater sublimity because they are in 
association with man, because they are part of 
man's world. It is doubtless true that 

" There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 
There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 
There is society, where none intrudes, 
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar." 

And yet the singing poet, it is easy to see, car- 
ries these great things in nature to their best. 
He gives them a voice ; he supplies them with 
new power; he lifts them into an ampler and 
nobler life. 

It hardly needs to be said that man rises in 
civilization through his insight into nature. 
Take all the knowledge of nature which civilized 
man possesses, all his skill in using nature's 
power, all the discoveries of nature's secret 
stores, and all the inventions that extend human 



NATURE AND HUMANITY 93 

control over these stores, and you have done 
much to explain his vast advance over savage 
man. This is so true that the man who first 
became fully aware of it won an endless fame. 
Bacon is simply the literary prophet of physi- 
cal science. His distinction is in his vision, and 
in the rich magnificence of his utterance. His 
vision is narrow, indeed, compared with that of 
the great ruling thinkers of the race. In extent 
and in value, Bacon's vision is immeasurably in- 
ferior to that of Plato and Aristotle, upon whom 
he never lost an excuse to pour his contempt. 
One thing, however, Bacon saw with surpassing 
clearness. He stood with his eyes turned earth- 
ward. He beheld the amazing possible service 
of physical things to the human race. He pro- 
phesied throughout his long career of the untold 
utility for man in the heart of nature. He put 
himself, his vision, his prophecy, and his pas- 
sion into the modern mind. The consequence is 
an unparalleled devotion to nature, an unparal- 
leled conquest over nature, and an unparalleled 
advance in the whole existence of civilized 
man. For his vision of this promised land, for 
his power to captivate the mind of man with his 
vision, Bacon has won his renown. Nothing 
could more clearly attest the truth of the remark 
that conquest over nature means for man the 
power of civilization. 



94 THEOUGR MAN TO GOD 

2. Thus we may speak of nature in man, and 
of humanity in nature. Man shows everywhere 
the marks of his temporal environment. His 
greatest thoughts have a provincial air about 
them. When he uses words, he employs sounds 
that ring with the suggestions of time and space. 
When he speaks of God as Father, he borrows 
a word from human society that carries in it 
worlds of high meaning and round it huge clouds 
of infirmity and sorrow. The word even drags 
up with it the associations of the animal origin 
of man. We speak of eternal love, and the great 
conception comes like the sun, but like the sun 
blazing a path for itself through the shadows 
of night ; it comes with associations of fleshly 
origin, sentimental meanings, mixed character, 
wide-reaching and doubtful report. We speak 
of the kingdom of love, and that word kingdom 
is unable to free itself from suggestions of the 
oppressions that have cursed mankind. We 
speak of the moral order, and again the associa- 
tions of law, custom, immemorial usage, sometimes 
good, sometimes evil, always far enough from 
ideal, cling to the august conception. Again the 
treasure is in the earthen vessel, again the vast 
idea is exposed to meanness and confusion by its 
temporal expression. Thus it is with heaven, one 
of our greatest and most consoling thoughts. It 
is in vain that we call it the world of spirit, the 



NATURE AND HUMANITY 95 

sphere of perfected moral service and fellowship, 
the realm where in full and happy consciousness 
just men live and move and have their being in 
God. Thus exalted, thus held aloof from our 
experience here, the great and beautiful thought 
becomes vague, insubstantial, powerless. It must 
die to live. It must put on a body of humiliation. 
It must clothe itself in metaphor. It must glow 
and burn in the fires of time. It must become 
our Father's house of many mansions, a sublime 
repetition of the fairest of human homes. And 
as the midnight sky in the lake is but an image 
of the starry vault above it, so, and conversely, 
our heaven must become another, ampler, holier, 
diviner earth, a vast and glorified picture hung in 
eternity of our life in time, — a holy city, a new 
Jerusalem, a place where they need no light of 
the sun nor of the moon, where the Lord God is 
himself the light, a world where the anthem is 
that of a company that no man can number, the 
voice of many waters and mighty thunderings. 
The tumult of time, the endless multitudes of be- 
lieving, purified souls lifted out of pain, glorified 
in the eternal, that is the form which our thought 
of heaven must put on. All our greatest thoughts 
must follow the example of Christ : they must 
lay aside their native superhuman glory. As far 
as pure intellectual form is concerned, they must 
make themselves of no reputation. They must 



96 THBOUGH MAN TO GOD 

descend upon man through images and asso- 
ciations that have power over man. They must 
assume the character of a servant; they must 
become obedient unto death, yea, the death of 
the cross. In return for this limitation upon our 
highest thoughts, this humiliation of our sub- 
limest conceptions, there is wrought the exalta- 
tion of humanity, the sovereignty of man, under 
God, over the interests that belong to man. 

Under the same law stands our rational and 
moral character. Our thinking is done at lucid in- 
tervals. We vegetate. Our food must be digested, 
and that process arrests thought ; we must sleep, 
we must play, we must attend to the business 
of living. Physical existence is a constant and 
harassing problem. Our thinking is done under 
these limitations. It is broken, patched, rolled 
in all the associations of our temporal existence. 
And when we attain to moments of freedom, how 
few and how fleeting these moments are ! An 
immortal moment, an ineffable hour, a heavenly 
vision, a pure glance into the soul of the universe, 
a prayer, a song, and then the return of the cloud, 
then back again to the wheel of fire. Aristotle's 
idea of blessedness, for God, was pure, continu- 
ous, untroubled, eternal vision ; and for man, 
those high moments when he could share that 
beatific vision. 

Not only as thinkers, but also as doers of the 



NATURE AND HUMANITY 97 

will of God we suffer here. We work for right- 
eousness in time and space, we work in our gen- 
eration and in our small neighborhood. We serve 
the cause of justice as hewers of wood and drawers 
of water, as food producers and transporters, as 
buyers and sellers, as battling with winds and 
storms in all the mean and small business of 
the world. Our ideals are set, like the stars, 
" in the black bosom of night." The character 
that we win, like the food upon which we live, is 
gathered in the fields of time. And again, we 
must not push too hard ; otherwise we shall defeat 
the high purpose of the soul. Insanity comes 
through vice and crime, through selfishness and 
shame ; it comes, too, through all forms of igno- 
rance. It comes through unwise religious pas- 
sion. We that are in this tabernacle do groan, 
being burdened. The marks of nature, obstinate, 
unconquerable, mysterious, are upon our whole 
human existence in this world. 

On the other side, if nature limits man, man 
gives to nature a meaning not her own. For 
uncounted ages she has been in closest associa- 
tion with man. She is thus steeped in humanity. 
Look into the Bible for examples. Is it nature 
as mountain? There are Mount Moriah and 
Abraham, Nebo and Moses, Carmel and Elijah, 
Tabor, Calvary, Olivet and Jesus. Is it the sea ? 
Jesus and Galilee, Paul and the Mediterranean, 



98 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

are in endless association. Is it the river ? The 
Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Jordan, Abana 
and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, are again full 
of human color and character. Is it the sun ? 
The outgoings of the morning and the evening 
are dyed in the humanity that has watched with 
immemorial admiration this double diurnal mir- 
acle of splendor. Is it the starry sky ? Job, and 
the millions whom he represents, look up and 
note Arcturus, Orion, and the Pleiades ; look up 
and fill those bright and peaceful worlds with 
the pathos and the aspiration of human hearts. 
The poet's song, called secular only by those 
who see nothing to revere in human love, repre- 
sents the association of man with the whole realm 
of nature : — 

" I see her in the dewy flowers — 

I see her sweet and fair. 
I hear her in the tunefu' birds — 

I hear her charm the air. 
There 's not a bonie flower that springs 

By fountain, shaw, or green, 
There 's not a bonie bird that sings, 

But minds me o' my Jean." 

Every object in nature is thus touched with fresh 
meaning through association with human love. 
Take the river. It flows on to-day as if it had 
just begun ; think of the ages of its life. In its 
source there is the inevitable suggestion of the 
beginnings of man in mystery and in weakness. 



NATURE AND HUMANITY 99 

In its swift, ceaseless movement there is the image 
of the unresting, everlasting generations of men. 
In its murmur there is the intonation of human- 
ity in its love and grief, in its victory and defeat, 
in its weariness and hope ; the sound of the river 
is the voice of the countless thousands who have 
lived upon its banks, who in its clear and calm 
current have found the mirror of their happiness 
and peace, who in its wild and dark floods have 
beheld an image of their passionate and tumult- 
uous lives. Oh, the pathos of that ongoing, whis- 
pering, singing, moaning river ! The heart-beats, 
the heart-breaks, the morning songs, and the 
unsilenceable hopes of a vast and vanished human 
world are there. And down to the sea goes the 
river. Onward to the end go the generations 
of men. The great sea waits for its own ; the 
Eternal God is our refuge and hope. This is but 
a hint of the epic of an immemorial humanity 
that is sung by Nile and Ganges, Tigris and 
Euphrates, Jordan and Tiber, Thames and Doon, 
Hudson and Mississippi. These are indeed parts 
of the river of God ; they make glad the city of 
man. 

Thus it is with all nature. It is filled with 
the humanity of man. And Jacob's well was 
there. Yes, Jacob's well is everywhere. Nature 
is fair, divinely fair, to the child. Wordsworth 
has spoken for the childhood of the world : — 

LOFC. 



100 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

" There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, 
The earth, and every common sight, 
To me did seem 
Apparelled in celestial light, 
The glory and the freshness of a dream." 

And for this testimony we thank the noble poet. 
But we cannot accept him as representative of 
humanity when he adds : — 

" It is not now as it hath been of yore ; — 
Turn wheresoe'er I may, 
By night or day, 
The things which I have seen I now can see no more." 

The vague dream of childhood matures into the 
splendid vision of manhood. The child sees only 
the sun ; the servant of God sees the angel 
standing in the sun. The child beholds only the 
tumultuous sea ; the servant of God sees again 
the mighty angel, and this time standing with 
one foot on the sea and the other on the earth, 
filling the world with his humanity, filling it with 
the revelation of the humanity of God. The sun 
and moon and stars have in their bright faces 
the image of all the lovers that have transfigured 
the earth, the lustre of all the saints that have 
hallowed it. The triumphant shout of all the sons 
of God is preserved in the endless song of the 
morning stars. The life, the love, the struggle, 
the victory, the defeat, the hope, the fellowship, 
the dear and divine humanity of the whole race, 



NATURE AND HUMANITY 101 

has risen into the heights of nature, has sunk 
into her heart, and for all thinking men she is 
immeasurably more and greater than she can be 
to the child. She is burdened with the pathos, 
the mystery, and the endless tragic prophecy of 
man's existence. The cloud rolls into the path 
of the setting sun. It is touched, shot through 
with light, changed into a burning mass of in- 
expressible splendor ; it is filled with the glory 
of the sun that is passing. Something like this 
has happened to nature. It has rolled into the 
path of humanity ; it is laden with the fires of 
human love, it is burning with the splendors of 
human faith and hope, it is transfigured in the 
meaning and mystery of the race that is on its 
way to God. 

3. Finally, we learn here what nature can give, 
and what she cannot give. She can give water 
from her deep, abundant, beautiful well. In that 
bounty we see her large and precious ministry to 
man. But there is a limit to this ministry of 
nature. The water of life she cannot give. Man 
cannot live by bread alone, but by every word 
that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. There 
is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the 
Almighty giveth him understanding. " In his 
will is our peace." He has made us for himself, 
and we cannot rest till we rest in Him. 

Three pictures rise upon the vision as we stand 



102 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

by this old well in Samaria. There is first of 
all the well and its founder and his family, his 
flocks and herds. In this picture the well seems 
to be all that the Patriarch needs. Under its 
abundant and refreshing ministry the sense of its 
limitation becomes vague. We are so delighted 
with what the well can do that we cease to think 
about what it cannot do. Thus when we see child- 
hood in the heart of nature, among its singing 
birds and springing flowers ; when we see youth 
delighted with the existence that breathing and 
sleep and food renew ; when we see men living 
a vigorous and happy life in gathering wealth, in 
commanding the material order, in drawing water 
for the thirsting world from the open fountains 
of material prosperity ; when we see human beings 
pleased with mere amusements, contented with 
the mere social excitement, satisfied to be in the 
whirl of things, like the unprotesting driftwood 
in the eddy of the river, we are apt to think that 
the outward realm is everj^thing, that Jacob's well 
is all that humanity needs. Ideals conform to 
this picture. The great sigh goes up : what shall 
we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal 
shall we be clothed? The picture in the vast 
popular imagination is of Jacob and his cara- 
van at the well, resting there, and refreshed from 
its ever-flowing fountains, and contented in this 
refreshment and rest. 



NATURE AND HUMANITY 103 

As we dream this mere sensuous dream, an- 
other picture disturbs us. There comes a woman 
of Samaria. Once she was a beautiful child. 
At her birth she brought joy and awe into the 
world. The sweet tidings of her advent sped like 
light from heart to heart, from home to home. 
She was given to God in the thankful love, in the 
joj'ous faith of her parents. She brought into her 
home a new world of love. She fed that sacred 
flame by her needs, by her promise, by the gra- 
cious ritual of childhood. She grew in personal 
grace and charm. She put forth the fair prophecy 
of womanhood. She stood on the threshold of 
mature existence a vision of loveliness and hope. 
Look at her now. Her life is blasted. It is filled 
with shame. Honor is gone. All regard for truth 
is gone. All hope of good repute is departed. 
All expectation of noble love is dead. What a 
wreck is here, what reversal of hope, what blast- 
ing of promise, what outrage upon humanity ! 

What can Jacob's well do for this woman ? Is 
there in its waters any full and adequate help 
for her ? 

" What hands are here ! . . . • 
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood 
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather 
The multitudinous seas incarnadine, 
Making the green — one red." 

This is the other side of the shield. We are other, 



104 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

we are more, than nature. We are not under a 
law from which we cannot break. Man is, and 
nature is not, self-governing. He ought to be 
true to the law of his being ; he can disregard 
that law ; he has done it, he is doing it, and that 
is his heritage of woe. We have done evil where 
we were bound to do good. Our hearts condemn 
us, and God is greater than our hearts and know- 
eth all things. We need forgiveness, and no man 
looking into mere natural law can say, " I believe 
in the forgiveness of sins." We need the effu- 
sion of divine power, the inspiration of the Al- 
mighty, and no man looking into the mere order 
of nature can say, " I believe in the Holy Ghost." 
We need the might that comes through fellow- 
ship in the vision of the sublimest ideals, through 
the discipline of a common service, through the 
consolation of union in worship, and no man 
looking into the unrenewed society of our time 
can say, " I believe in the communion of saints." 
We need the sense of the life that is endless, that 
is without break or pause, that carries in its heart 
the consciousness of its infinite meaning for God, 
and again, no man looking into the mere laws of 
the cosmos, into the graves of the race, can say, 
" I believe in the life everlasting." To the well 
of Jacob we come for water ; for the water of 
life we must go elsewhere. Nature as cosmos, 
nature as the world over against man, nature as 



NATURE AND HUMANITY 105 

the name for the sum of the forces and laws 
other than man, can give us bread, but she can- 
not give us the bread of life. 

The well that we need as men is the well of 
the spirit. The water that we need for our souls 
is the water of life. Our deepest need is the need 
of moral order, social justice, human unselfish- 
ness, personal integrity. We come for the power 
to rise from the natural man into the normal, into 
the spiritual man. We come for help to secure 
the high and proper attribute of humanity, — 
love. We cry for the birth of love, the growth 
of love, the manhood of love, its ascendency, its 
sovereignty, its endless and cloudless reign. And 
in man we come to know the character of the 
Power that is underneath Jacob's well, that is 
underneath our humanity, who of nature and of 
humanity in himself constitutes the divine uni- 
verse. We come in vain to mere nature, we come 
with gain only when in man crowned with the 
attributes of love we behold the image of our 
God. 

Thus the final picture is of Jesus at the well. 
There you see nature living in the vision of 
Jesus, there you note what her birds of heaven 
and her lilies of the field owe to his senses, and 
there you see him rejoicing in the great and con- 
stant ministry of nature. There you see the su- 
preme human soul, the soul that in itself is higher 



106 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

than the heavens, weary with its journey, resting 
by the well, accommodating its sovereign thoughts 
and feelings and purposes and acts to the capaci- 
ties of the body, to the law and manner of a pro- 
vincial and passing world, making itself of no 
reputation, becoming obedient to this mystery of 
humiliation ; and there you behold mountain and 
stream, city and village, fruitful field and barren 
waste, the earth and the sky, the whole order of 
nature, hallowed in the memory of his divine hu- 
manity, burning and yet unconsumed in the holy 
fires of his love. There you note what nature 
can do and do well ; there, too, you note what 
she cannot do. She is playground for the chil- 
dren of men ; she is battleground for the sons of 
men. She is the rich condition of physical exist- 
ence. She is the deep and dear old well to which 
all the generations come in gladness for refresh- 
ment and rest. But for the soul of Jesus, nature's 
hands are empty. He lives upon God. His meat 
is to do the will of God and to accomplish God's 
work. His bread is his Father's wisdom, his 
drink is his Father's love. His being moves in 
the sustaining strength of the Eternal. His per- 
fect humanity is at an infinite height above nature. 
His thought answers to the thought of God, his 
love to the love of God, his will to the will of God. 
His thought is truth, his passion is love, his will 
is righteousness, his deed is power. He is the 



NATURE AND HUMANITY 107 

perfect human soul, and therefore, he is the com- 
plete human utterance of God. Here is some- 
thing that the cosmos cannot give. Here is the 
mind of God in the mind of man at his best ; 
here is the heart of God in the heart of man at 
his highest ; here is the will of God in the will of 
man in its sublimest mood ; here is the Eternal 
Father in the Son who represents the origin, the 
mission, and the destiny of our humanity. Here 
with him at the well let us rest ; here through 
his sovereign soul let us look upon God ; here let 
us ask of him that he may give us the living 
water. 






VI 

LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 

"And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto 
him but a few days, for the love he had to her." 

Genesis xxix, 20. 

Good men, as they grow older, become more and 
more sympathetic and grateful toward youth. 
And no grateful friend of youth can look un- 
moved upon the meeting of these two cousins, 
Jacob the son of Rebecca, and Rachel the 
daughter of Laban. The freshness, the beauty of 
morning is in the scene. The touch of a mystic 
humanity is in it ; the profound and tender feeling 
of kindred is there, the feeling of kindred in the 
deepest-hearted race that ever lived. Jacob is a 
wanderer, an exile from his home because of his 
misdeeds. We can imagine what the vision of 
this fair cousin in the bloom of youth was to him. 
Rachel is at the monotonous task of a shepherd's 
daughter; and we can imagine her appreciation 
of the young man who rolled the stone from 
the well's mouth, and who that memorable day 
watered the flocks for her. " And Jacob kissed 
Rachel and lifted up his voice and wept." The 
power of blood, the joy of kinship, the instinc- 
tive gladness and tenderness of concordant hearts, 



LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 109 

the religious awe and delight of unnamed and 
unconscious love, took possession of both. Then 
comes the dust of the actual blown in the clean 
and shining face of the ideal. The commercial 
nephew speaks to the commercial uncle. For the 
prophetic father of Israel was not carried away 
by sentiment, at least he was not so carried away 
by it as to be incapable of making a contract. 
The contract with the father and uncle was that 
Jacob should serve for Rachel seven years ; and 
we are told that they seemed to him but a few 
days, for the love he had for her. 

In this profoundly beautiful Old Testament 
story there is a path to some of the greatest 
things in human life ; there is a path to the 
sources of our whole human world ; there is an 
introduction to the living order of our humanity. 
The story seems to suggest for our subject the 
revelation of God through youth, and our discus- 
sion falls into two divisions, — love and life, and 
love and time. 

I. We note in the story the great word love 
upon the lips of life. It was the love first of 
cousin for cousin, second of youth for youth, 
finally of man for woman and of woman for 
man. What did it mean ? That question should 
not be difficult to answer. The experience is 
so genuinely, purely, beautifully human that it 
should not be hard to discern its character. 



110 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

There is in it the vision of the ideal, the passion 
for the ideal. Jacob saw before him the beauty 
of the universe embodied, not wholly embodied, 
indeed. He was a sane lover, and doubtless felt 
that Rachel, fair as she was, could become fairer 
still. The embodied ideal suggested the ideal to 
be embodied, the ideal unembodied, fugitive, im- 
measurable, infinite, eternal. Jacob found, too, 
that he was able in the presence of this woman 
to revere all women. Rachel redeemed the race. 
In a degree all women were fair and sweet because 
they wore her nature. The ideal that glorified 
the nature, that sweetened the flesh and blood 
of this woman, lived in womankind with hallow- 
ing power. Further, this man found that he could 
respect himself. He had fallen from that height. 
His deceit and lies had cast him down. But he 
has somehow found reconciliation with his con- 
science. Doubtless in his case it was not a hard 
master. Still he has gone forth into the disin- 
terested life. He has become a lover ; and love 
gives the sense of worth ; it gives strength and 
boldness. This man found the ideal in himself, 
giving to his being exaltation, refinement, dignity, 
composure, and hope. He looked upon mankind 
with new eyes. The ideal was in all men ; they 
were wanderers like himself, and in one degree 
or another they were lovers. A further discovery 
yet this man makes. Here is the universe. It 



LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 111 

must be the final home of the ideal. Somewhere 
that soul of fire resides in it. Perhaps that eter- 
nal spirit of loveliness fills it, and is the fountain of 
all its worth. Arcturus, Orion, and the Pleiades 
are perhaps but the high and shining symbols 
of it ; the countless stars are perhaps but the 
bright and sovereign eyes with which the eternal 
ideal watches the ways of men. Thus in the 
vision of the ideal and in the passion for it this 
man has been led to the fountains of home, of 
human brotherhood, and of faith in God. 

The true human home rests upon love. That 
love is the vision of an embodied ideal and the 
passion for it. This revelation of God is renewed 
in every fresh generation. The minister lives by 
the side of this great fountain of our humanity. 
He sees with Wordsworth the native endowment 
of childhood ; the boundless surge of the Divine 
nature he notes behind it. With the exultant 
poet he sees the children sport upon the shore, 
and hears 

" The mighty waters rolling evermore." 

He sees and hears, however, more than this. The 
tabernacle of God is with men. The minister be- 
holds the boys and girls become young men and 
maidens. Their love of life, their intense desire 
for pleasure, their keen sense of humor, their 
aptitude for laughter, their unstable and fugitive 



112 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

seriousness, their exposure to imposture, and their 
genius for mistakes do not hide from his penetrat- 
ing and sympathetic vision the vast consecration 
of existence which love brings. Even in unmoral 
natures love issues in reverence for the object 
of it. It gathers itself into promises, it goes 
out in pledges, it offers up instructive prayers, 
it calls upon manhood to stand upon its honor, it 
summons the soul to a new and a responsible 
life. And where children have been fortunate 
in their childhood, where young men and young 
women have been fortunate in their youth, where 
their environment has been wholesome, and 
where their friends have been high, nothing on 
this earth is more beautiful or more significant 
than the flowering of the nature in honest hmnan 
love. There is what we call the idealization of 
the woman by the man, and of the man by the 
woman. Upon the part of both there is insight 
into the awful beauty of the human soul. There 
is the discovery in the beloved life of an ideal 
embodied, and still unembodied, hovering over 
existence, and calling, " Come up higher." In 
each for the other, flesh and blood are sweetened 
by this ideal, indwelling and yet transcendent ; 
in each for the other, personality is touched with 
awe because of the loving soul within, and yet 
more because of the fathomless capacity for love 
there. Here one comes to understand the majesty 



LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 113 

of Kant's great dictum : Never use personality, 
your own or another's, as means, but always re- 
vere it as an end. When you read the story of 
Jacob and Rachel, Hsemon and Antigone, Dante 
and Beatrice, Edwards and Sarah Pierrepont, 
Burns and Highland Mary, you are sure that 
the heart of all true love is reverence, and that 
reverence is the only assurance of honor. Stand 
in awe and sin not. Nothing less and nothing 
other than the force of gravity can keep our 
planet to its orbit; nothing less and nothing 
other than the awe born of love can assuredly 
and peacefully control the passions of man. 

Into this high mood the youth of each new gen- 
eration are brought. They are brought hither in 
preparation for the greatness of family life. The 
consecration of love is a consecration in moral 
awakening, in moral purpose, in moral power. 
The family life of mankind is the first great rev- 
elation of the moral order of the world. The 
lover alone is justified in founding a home, the 
lover alone can keep his vow, the lover alone has 
the reverence that exalts the soul, that protects 
the inviolable rights of united personalities, that 
surely promises a harvest of happiness. Look at 
the trees in your orchard in the month of May. 
Is there any tree there undowered with blossoms, 
whose life has not flowered into this miracle 
of stainless beauty ? That tree might as well be 



114 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

dead. Those others, tossing their boughs tipped 
with exquisite life, sweetening the air with deli- 
cious perfumes, are the living trees. From them 
the golden harvest is to come. If you can think of 
a procession of loveless youth on the way to the 
marriage altar, you have over again, and this 
time in humanity, the dead tree. The human pre- 
paration for the august relation does not exist. 
The new life that consecrates for the new estate 
is not there. The fountain that is to quench the 
family thirst for all high bearing and all noble 
deeds is choked. Humanity there is denied, 
desecrated, put to open shame. Only the proces- 
sion of lovers are qualified to found homes ; only 
they whose natures have flowered in a great and 
beautiful ideal and who see each in the other the 
presence and prophecy of that ideal, only they 
whose souls have beheld each other in mystery 
and awe, are fitted to establish the greatest of all 
institutions. For the first revelation of normal 
youth is just this : the awakening of man is in 
love, the heart of love is reverence, and reverence 
is the last and the mightiest assurance of a just 
and good life. 

It is true to-day that the lover is the source 
of all high social feeling. Self-respect is the sum- 
mit of the soul, and when one has risen to that 
elevation, he finds in corresponding elevations a 
multitude of men. The fine thing about the sum- 



LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 115 

mit of a towering alpine height is the discovery 
that it is not alone, that it is one of a vast range 
of similar heights, that it beholds rising about it 
sister peaks, on whose crests it watches with joy 
the play of morning and the glow of evening. 
The man who has found his own conscience has 
little difficulty in finding conscience in other men. 
The bad man lives in a valley. He is sunken in 
the deep and narrow defile of his own sordidness. 
He mistakes his misfortune for the order of hu- 
man nature. There are, indeed, multitudes with 
him in his calamity. Still, the facts of their lives 
do not give the truth about man. They cannot see 
the mountains that tower all about them because 
they are lost in the abyss of their own selfishness. 
If they would but rise, in honor, in friendship, 
in the sense of obligation, in disinterested man- 
hood, they would behold towering about them 
kindred spirits. It was one of the worst of poli- 
ticians who said that every man has his price. He 
had spent his life in giving and in taking bribes ; 
he had lived among those who were hungry for 
bribes ;• hence his generalization. If he had been 
himself a just man, he would have lived else- 
where, he would have met other men, he would 
have looked into the faces of kings. 

Self-respect is found in love. The lover knows 
his worth, and his capacity for immeasurable 
worth. He beholds other lovers and notes their 



116 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

worth, actual and possible. It is therefore easy 
for him to live, in open vision of all the mistakes 
and imperfections of men, with a prevailing sense 
of the majesty of the human soul. Here is a 
swamp maple. The autumn has come and turned 
it into a living, burning splendor. It knows the 
glory of its life and rejoices in it. It looks abroad 
and sees other trees of its kind. There they 
stand, all touched with the same fire, all burn- 
ing in the same splendor. One swamp maple in 
the autumn differs in glory from another swamp 
maple. But the racial distinction is in every one 
of them. Each, as it burns in the autumn sun- 
light, sees that all the others are touched with the 
same beauty ; therefore they are a brotherhood 
and preach the community of beautiful lives. 
The man who loves one woman reveres woman- 
hood. Womankind through that special woman 
commands honor. The nature of the race is 
read in a single instance, the capacity of the race 
is seen in this particular member, the high func- 
tion of all is beheld and revered in the sacred 
humanity of the individual person. The lover 
is the knight ; he is the true seer of the order of 

woman^^d- 

In the same light he reads the nature of men. 
They are capable of his vision of an embodied 
ideal, his passion for it, his self-consecration in 
its presence. If his life is dyed in the color of 



LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 111 

this dayspring from on high, if his nature is 
warm and resplendent with the presence in it of 
a hallowing affection, he is able to look abroad 
and to discover a host of men standing in the 
sun. Social sentiment in its purest character and 
in its highest power is the issue of love. Play- 
mates, schoolmates, classmates, comrades in this 
profession and in that, citizens of the same great 
country, come to the divine fountain of love 
for the consecration of youth into the complete 
sense of human brotherhood. The older men and 
women have loved, their existence has been hal- 
lowed by it, their losses and sorrows are sacra- 
ments of it. They lead out to the older contempo- 
rary humanity of the world, carrying its flaming 
memory in the cloud of present grief. They lead 
backward to the humanity that has loved and 
suffered and gone. And here are the children, 
the young men and maidens of to-morrow, the 
lovers who are coming, who are to bless the world 
with their brightened lives. In between the older 
generation and the younger, between the retreat- 
ing lovers and the advancing, are the present pos- 
sessors of this divine charm. They unite in their 
own anointed humanity the past and the present 
and the future of mankind. In their shining faces 
we see the race reflected, and in spite of all bru- 
tality, we know that the race is one. 

Here, too, is the fountain of all living faith. 



118 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

The Bible is not the first witness for God. The 
world, the cosmos, the universe, is not the first. 
The soid alive through love is the aboriginal wit- 
ness for God. Does color mean anything to the 
blind ? Does great music signify anything to the 
deaf ? Do Assyrian characters convey to you or 
to me the least knowledge of the hands that 
formed them or the minds that breathed thought 
into them ? For the world at large the Scriptures 
must be translated from Hebrew and Greek into 
the language of the people. Still another trans- 
lation must be made. The Bible is the lover's 
book. It is the greatest expression of the great- 
est love that has ever visited mankind. The lov- 
er's vision of the ideal is in it, and how sublime 
that vision is ! The lover's passion for the ideal 
is in it, and how great that passion is! Now 
it is as soft and gentle as the zephyr, again 
there is in it the rush of the hurricane ; here it is 
the low, sweet evening song of the bird, there it 
is the peal of thunder. The Bible is an elemen- 
tal book, — elemental in the vastness of its vision 
of the ideal, and in the fullness and splendor of 
its passion. And this book is a sealed book until 
the angel of love breaks the seal. 

Coleridge made a remark about the Bible 
which has become a proverb. He said that the 
Bible found him, and found him at greater depths 
of his being than all other books ; therefore he 



LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 119 

believed in it as he believed in no other. But 
this remark shows that Coleridge was alive. lie 
had become a lover ; he had seen with his own 
eyes the divine ; he had felt its power upon his 
own heart. And the Bible came in to interpret, 
to expand, to exalt, to purify, and to breathe 
into his soul, in greater fullness, the Holy Ghost. 
Understandest thou what thou readest? said 
Philip to the Ethiopian. How can I, except some 
one shall guide me ? was the Ethiopian's reply. 
What was the obstacle ? There was the story of 
a supremely good man treated as if he had been 
supremely bad. That was plain to the reader. The 
puzzle was to know who the person was to whom 
the language applied. Philip's task was easy. 
He had only to recite the story of the ministry and 
the sufferings of Jesus, and the passage became 
clear. But suppose the Ethiopian had been with- 
out the sense of suffering love. Suppose him never 
to have known anything about the higher hero- 
ism of the human soul. Suppose him to have 
been mean, sordid, self-centred, destitute of the 
least experience of the illuminating power of love. 
In that case Philip's task would have been hope- 
less. You can as soon explain color to the blind, 
or a Beethoven symphony to the deaf, as you can 
expound to a loveless heart the greater things 
in the Bible. For the Bible is born of love ; it is 
the sovereign historic expression of it, and that 



120 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

one may understand it, he must bring to it the 
lover's mind and heart. 

For the beginnings of faith we come back to 
youth. The ideal is in the beloved ; it is not 
wholly there. The maddest lover will confess 
that. The ideal is in contemporary humanity, in 
so far as it loves, in so far as it has the capacity 
to love. The statue of Memnon sang when the 
morning light touched it ; but all through the 
dark hours of night the capacity of joyous re- 
sponse to the appeal of the new day slumbered 
in its marble heart. That capacity made it a 
wonder. The youth who at the touch of the 
heavenly person breaks into the song of love, 
carried in his heart from the beginning that 
divine capacity. Thus the ideal lives in con- 
temporary humanity because of love and because 
of the capacity for love. Any moment the light 
may come that shall inspire with song these 
multitudes of silent, statuesque lives. 

The ideal is in contemporary humanity, but it 
is not wholly there. Love is as old as man. It 
began with the earliest beholding eyes, and the 
beating of the first human heart. It has been the 
romance of each new generation. It has held 
worth and joy in life against all brutality and all 
misery. It has hallowed the career of man. It 
has been through the whole terrible tragedy of 
history the prevailing presence of the Holy Spirit ; 



LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 121 

we can hear the successive generations singing, 
sometimes from the heights, and sometimes from 
the depths : — 

" All hail ! ye tender feelings dear ! 
The smile of love, the friendly tear, 
The sympathetic glow ! 
Long since this world's thorny ways 
Had numbered out my weary days, 
Had it not been for you ! " 

However hard, however cold, however cruel it 
may have become at times, the race is carried in 
youth into the vast and beautiful kingdom of 
love. 

The ideal is in mankind ; but it is not wholly 
there. It is here, and it is afar ; it is at our side, 
and it is higher than the heavens. It is indwelling 
in man, and at the same time transcendent, fugi- 
tive, immeasurable, eternal. It fills the universe. 
It is the order, the beauty, the goodness, of all 
that exists. It is the true animus mundi, the 
ineffable Soul of the universe. Its shadow has 
been in the lover's heart since love began. Its 
shadow is in the heart of lovers still. We chase 
the flying loveliness, and still we remain in 
that awful shadow. At length we perceive that 
we are in the secret place of the Most High, 
and under the shadow of the Almighty. 

Thus youth in its dower of love reveals the 
rock on which the family life of mankind rests ; 



122 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

thus it discovers the bonds that bind into one 
brotherhood the whole race of man ; thus it finds 
in its own heart the word of God, and is able to 
receive that word in sovereign power back from 
the Book of faith. And thus youth in its love, 
when it understands itself, may sing to the world : 

"Mighty the Wizard 
Who found me at sunrise 
Sleeping, and woke me 
And learn'd me Magic ! 
Great the Master, 
And sweet the Magic, 
When over the valley, 
In early summers, 
Over the mountain, 
On human faces, 
And all around me, 
Moving to melody, 
Floated the Gleam." 

II. Love is of God ; so wrote the beloved 
disciple in his old age. In his youth there 
had come to him through Jesus the revelation 
of God. As a young man the supreme aspect 
of that revelation had been love, and the or- 
ganic structure of human life. Working in 
the fires of his passionate youth; living in his 
ideals as a son, brother, and disciple ; flam- 
ing in his sympathies as a human being, Jesus 
had shown to John the love of God. Youth has 
left him long since. The Eternal loveliness in 



LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 123 

tin- form of his Master has long ago vanished 
from the earth. For more than the half of a 
long life, the conflict in his heart has been be- 
tween love and time. When life has reached its 
maturity, when the tumult of passion has sub- 
sided, when the world is passing away from us 
into the power of the coming generation, does 
love last? The spread of the eagle's wings is 
great and beautiful, but wholly dependent upon 
the strength of its spinal cord. Is it so with love ? 
Its wide-reaching sympathies begin, as we have 
seen, in the mysterious fires of youth. Are they 
withdrawn, do they droop and fail, when the 
prime of physical life is past ? Is the material- 
ist right, whether philosopher or novelist, when 
he contends that love is the incident of physi- 
ology? When we grant to the materialist that 
love begins with the bloom of youth, are we 
bound to accept his conclusion that it fades with 
that bloom ? May we not contend that, in the 
case of the true man and woman, there is evolved 
from the lower, sensuous love, a higher, a self- 
sustaining, a divine love, even as from the creep- 
ing caterpillar there is evolved the life that no 
longer needs the feet of its former self, that has 
wings to bear it upward from the earth? 

Plato has dedicated one of his immortal Dia- 
logues to love. Many friends meet at a great ban- 
quet. Around the table where so much genius and 



124 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

good-fellowship is gathered the theme of conver- 
sation is love. Speeches are made upon this 
theme by a variety of persons. At last Socrates 
speaks ; and his general thought is true for all 
time. Love is the life of the cosmos ; it puts 
on a multitude of forms ; it is subject to fright- 
ful abuses ; it has, besides, lower forms and 
higher. Its inmost character is found in its 
power of ascension. It pushes ever upward, and 
still upward. It is defeated unless it flowers at 
last in the adoration of the Eternal loveliness. It 
begins in God, and, when free and unimpeded, 
through animal life, through human life, through 
the soul of the rapt lover of wisdom, it returns 
to God. What love is when it enters humanity, 
you may know when you see it issuing from 
humanity in the glorious passion of the philoso- 
phic soul. The last of love is the revelation of 
the first of love ; the revelation of God through 
the youthful lover is perfected through the vet- 
eran lover. 

In this great Dialogue, Alcibiades describes 
Socrates as like the bust of Silenus kept in the 
rooms of artists, outside huge, coarse, ugly, but 
containing within images of the gods. Nothing 
could better represent the life of any true man 
in his contest with time. Time takes the young 
Apollo and turns him into the bust of Silenus. 
And if the outward is everything, when youth is 



LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 125 

gone, all grace, all charm, all strength is gone. 
But the exterior is not everything. Inside that 
bust of Silenus is the fair image of God, inside 
that body from which the strength and grace 
have gone there is a soul of loveliness looking up 
in awe and in hope to the Eternal. Look upon 
the outward, but do not stop with that ; look 
inward and behold there the love that is grow- 
ing deeper, richer, fairer, every day, that in its 
hiding-place prays for the coming of the king- 
dom of love, that waits for the freedom and the 
triumph of the City of God. 

In the story of Jacob and Rachel, love meets 
time and service, meets them as obstacles in its 
way. Our interpretation of that wonderful idyll 
will be incomplete if we do not consider for a 
few moments this conflict of love and time. 

That lover of the ancient world was compelled 
to wait and to serve. He made light of both time 
and service. The years were as days in the joy of 
his full heart. The present was so crowded with 
gladness that concern for the future was impos- 
sible. The service exacted of him was not even 
mentioned. It wrought within him chastity of 
heart ; it gave him worth and self-reliance ; and 
it was one great form of communion between 
him and the object of his love. Love conquered 
time, it conquered everything; sovereign in life, 
it became sovereign over all. 



126 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

Is this high disdain for youth, and only for 
youth ? Is this revelation of God through youth 
limited in its inspiration to youth ? Does the east 
that gives the sun keep the sun ? Does not the 
sun roll forward, spreading his light through the 
whole sky ? Still rolling onward, does he not go 
hence in the west, revealing his soul of fire there 
as he could not reveal it in the east? This is 
the truth about the course of the sun ; this is the 
truth about the path of the just. Maturity takes 
the ideals of youth and holds them with a 
quieter and surer strength. It sees the three 
great objects of youthful love, — the family, 
the social whole, the Infinite, — and follows them 
with a vaster and purer veneration. The morn- 
ing song of the bird is louder, but infinitely less 
sweet and tender, than its evening song. Love 
has more passion in youth, but it has more 
pathos and piety in age. Love's all hail is great, 
its farewell is greater. 

The first great advantage of the veteran lover 
over love's raw recruit is that he understands 
something of the power that has been with him 
all these years. He sees that the domestic life 
of man is an order of lovers. It is a vast, it is 
an immemorial institute. It has been burdened 
with error and smitten with sorrow. It has been 
girt about by fearful enemies ; these enemies have 
fiercely assailed it, and often they have prevailed 



LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 127 

against it and inflicted upon it the most seri- 
ous injury. Still it has survived. It is bound to 
survive. It is in movement from the more to the 
less imperfect. It is under the ceaseless attrac- 
tion of the ideal born of the highest love. To 
this it is held ; toward this it is rising ; into 
the likeness of this it will be transformed. You 
look at the star when it sparkles on the dim 
horizon line, when it sends its half -baffled gleam 
through the mist and smoke that lie round it on 
the lower levels of its career. That is not the 
whole star. Wait and watch it as it climbs. Slowly 
it creeps upward away from the foul vapors of 
the earth ; steadily it escapes from limitation and 
distress, surely it reaches the zenith, and there 
it shines in pure, untroubled splendor. Look at 
the family life of the world in early times ; look 
at it in later times. Mark in it this one feature, 
its steady improvement, its constant ascent. The 
Eternal lover whom we have found is lifting the 
human home out of the dust and darkness of ani- 
malism ; he is carrying it upward into his own 
presence. He will bring the lover's home to its 
state of purity and light and peace at last. For 
this the older lover sees that he must serve and 
wait. And because of the love that he has toward 
that consummation of the human home, he dis- 
counts the services and disdains the years. 
The veteran lover has another advantage. He 



128 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

is established in the sense of history. Visions 
that brighten life for a moment and then vanish 
like the fires of morning in the east greatly dis- 
courage youth. Deferred hope, postponed fulfill- 
ment, makes the heart of the youthful idealist 
sick. The descent of the ideal into human exist- 
ence is as slow as the descent of the glacier. This 
is a discouragement to youth. It was the youth- 
ful prophet who cried, " O Lord, how long ! " 
The peril of every successive generation of youth 
is here. The thirst of young life is for immediate 
realizations. Eonian fulfillments through eonian 
struggle take the moral heart and hope out of 
thousands. The sun is up ; why should it not 
ripen the grain before sunset ? The ideal of bro- 
therhood is here ; why should it not at once 
mature the whole race in love ? This postponed 
fulfillment quenches the light of the ideal in 
multitudes of the young. Thus the multitudes 
forsook Jesus ; thus they abandon his cause to- 
day. The hunger for immediacy overcomes them. 
They gladly entertain the vision of Christ ; they 
are unequal to the service and the patience of 
Christ. 

Here the older lover makes a great return to 
the younger. The mills of the gods grind slow ; 
the years bring one into that sorrowful con- 
sciousness. The mills of the gods grind slow, but 
they grind exceeding small ; time brings one into 



LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 129 

the happy sense of this inevitable process of the 
Eternal spirit. We look backward to-day as 
men in other days were unable to do. The vista 
of history is immensely extended. And the vet- 
eran lover surveys this immeasurable field with 
chastened joy. He sees on the far horizon a race 
made but little above the beast of the field. He 
watches the advance. It is out of the brutal state 
into something better ; it is up from the savage 
into the barbarian ; it is away from the barbarian 
into some rude form of civilization. The move- 
ment sways to this side and again to that ; some- 
times there is demoralization and temporary 
retreat. The advance is, however, soon renewed. 
Impediments are shed in the successive epochs, in 
the successive stages of the march. The man is 
advancing, the brute is retreating. And our vet- 
eran lover is a being who looks " before and after." 
The backward look has become a vast justifica- 
tion of hope. Behind the sheep is the shepherd 
driving his flock toward the uplands. The sheep 
that hitherto have been driven are here and there 
beginning to see the goal, here and there they are 
in headlong pursuit of it. Instinct and moral 
necessity are issuing, in the leading communities 
of mankind, in insight and choice. The race 
under compulsion is becoming the race under 
freedom ; the shepherd is appearing in the van 
of his flock, and his sheep know his voice. Some 



130 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

day the weary epoch of approach upon brother- 
hood by impulsion will become the happy epoch 
of advance by attraction. The slow movement 
under constraint will yet issue in the eager, vic- 
torious rush for the summits of human good. 

This is the vision of the older lover. He knows 
something of the greatness of history. Into this 
sense of the humanizing process of time he has 
come ; therefore he is undismayed. When it was 
the single human course that he was considering, 
he was like one watching the ascent of a solitary 
star. Now he is thinking of the race, and it is 
as if he were watching the slow ascent of a con- 
stellation. Perhaps it is Orion gleaming through 
the smoke of the city from the south ; perhaps 
it is the Wain defining its starry order through 
the vapors of evening on the north. Here not a 
single star, but a system of stars, must rise. Now 
they are veiled from sight, and again they show 
their bright faces. Here one seems victorious ; 
there the rest of the group seem lost. Is the 
salvation only of the remnant? Are those stars 
in the belt of Orion alone to go on ? Are those 
two in the Wain that look up to their shining 
comrade in the north alone to ascend ? As the 
mists rise and fall, as the clouds come and go, 
it seems a doubtful case for this constellation and 
that. But the night grows clearer, the hours move 
forward, and the watcher beholds each group 



LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 131 

becoming' more resplendent. The heavens are 
half scaled ; the zenith is yet afar off, but the 
way to it is open and fair, and the ascent is sure. 
Such is the vision of the veteran lover con- 
cerning the brotherhood of man. He sees the 
obstacles in the way ; but they are the mountain- 
tops, the earthly vapors, the flying clouds, that 
only seem to cross and obstruct the path of the 
serene, ascending stars. 

The veteran lover has a yet greater advantage. 
The younger lover has God with him and hardly 
knows it. The older lover has God with him 
and rests his cause upon God. There is something 
very noble in the love that is conscious only of 
itself, that notes neither time nor toil. Jacob lost 
in the pure delight of loving, and unconscious 
both of the years and their burden, is a picture 
of infinite charm. It is a mood precious and full 
of power ; it is not the highest mood, nor is it 
possessed of the highest power. The lover, so 
the Apostle John tells us, is born of God, " for 
God is love." And the older lover looks to the 
Eternal source of his being and his hope. He 
passes over to the side of the Divine lover ; he 
learns to live and to work with God. 

Here, surely, is a fundamental difference be- 
tween youth and maturity. Youth is self-suffi- 
cient, nobly so. It is conscious of vision and 
power ; it is still the morning hour. The work 



132 THROUGH MAN TO GOB 

to be done is great ; but the strength is great, 
and the hour is at hand. Freedom, obligation, 
responsibility, personal achievement, the large 
plan, the confident campaign, the restless, rush- 
ing energy, the boundless and urgent hope, the 
kingdom of God at hand, — these are the great 
notes of youth. Let them ring forth from every 
new generation of youth. They blend in a great 
song of faith for mankind. 

Maturity makes a different contribution. The 
consciousness of power is less keen, the conscious- 
ness of the work to be done is deeper. The sense 
of the self-reliant soul passes into the sense of 
the trustworthy God. The refrain comes to be, 
" Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, 
saith the Lord." The sense of a world-plan, 
the sense of history within this world-plan, the 
consciousness of the Eternal power not our- 
selves that makes for righteousness, the vision of 
the Infinite lover of men, — these are the notes 
of the older believers. They blend in a psalm ; 
and in return for the song of the youthful lover, 
this psalm is sent back from the heart of the 
veteran lover. Here men rely less on the light of 
this day, and more on the sun that will endlessly 
renew the day. This day must end, it must end 
soon ; and when it is done the work will still re- 
main unfinished. The day is brief for the youth- 
ful lover because of his joy in his beloved ; 



LIFE AND LOVE AND TIME 133 

the day is brief for the veteran lover because so 
much remains to be done for his beloved. Both 
lovers meet in the sense of the brevity, the 
nothingness of time ; but they meet in different 
moods. Jacob with Rachel to love laughs at 
time ; Jacob blessing his sons at the end of life, 
with part of his human treasure on earth and 
part in the unseen, looks upon time with serious 
eyes. 

The victory of love over time is easy until 
time brings up his dark ally, death. For the 
conflict of love and time issues in the conflict of 
love and death. And it is here that the veteran 
lover is strong. He has gone to the source of 
his own love ; he has ascended to the spring of 
all the love that has blessed his days. His trea- 
sure has driven him to God for protection. 
He has risen into the presence of the Eternal 
love, and into his almighty hands he has com- 
mitted the burden of his heart, and the burden 
of all hearts. 

" Love is and was my lord and king, 
And in his presence I attend 
To hear the tidings of my friend, 
Which every hour his couriers bring. 

" Love is and was my king and lord, 
And will be, tho' as yet I keep 
Within his court on earth, and sleep 
Eucompass'd by his faithful guard, 



134 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

" And hear at times a sentinel 

Who moves about from place to place, 
And whispers to the worlds of space, 
In the deep night, that all is well." 

Flight means for the bird three things : plum- 
age purified, wings invigorated, the goal won. 
The flight of time means for the soul that keeps 
alive within itself adoration of the Highest three 
things : humanity sanctified, faith strengthened, 
vision surer of the coming of the kingdom of God. 
Time brings the philosophic mind, leads the intel- 
ligence to the ultimate origin of the forces that 
work through life. Time carries the love of man 
up to the love of God as source, inspiration, and 
endless assurance. Time enables the faithful soul 
to trace the beauty of the world up to the Eternal 
beauty, to follow the streams of human worth 
up to the Eternal worth, and at the close of the 
day, with the toil unfinished and the great con- 
summation unattained, to trust in perfect peace 
our whole human world — the bright and dear 
world of youth become the vast and sacred 
world of age — to the Infinite lover of men. 



VII 
THE SERVANT OF ABRAHAM 

"As for me, the Lord hath led me in the way to the house of my mas- 
ter's brethren." 

Genesis xxiv, 27. 

We have heard in our time a great many things 
said against human nature. Indeed, there is an 
immemorial tradition against its trustworthiness. 
Our humanity has descended to us wrapt in a 
cloud of scandal leagues in depth, which only 
the wind of regeneration can disperse. We have 
come to entertain serious suspicions of our hon- 
esty and of the honesty of our fellow men. Per- 
haps this mood is not altogether without rea- 
son. Our behavior and the behavior of others 
have not always been true. On this ground of 
justifiable disappointment with ourselves and our 
friends we have come to think meanly of human 
nature. The errors, the follies, the vices, the 
crimes, and the sins of men are laid at the door 
of human nature. That is the fountain of all 
our woe. Corrupted in Adam, or in our pre- 
human ancestors, or in the polluted stream 
of vast and regular inheritance, we have come 
to think there is no health in us. Nothing good 
is to be expected for mankind until this cor- 



136 THROUGH MAN TO GOB 

rupted humanity is renewed, re-ereated, glorified 
in God. 

It requires some courage to question the truth 
of this tradition in the face of all the weaknesses, 
vices, crimes, and inhumanities that seem to sup- 
port it. These terrible things are here ; but they 
should be counted, not against human nature, but 
against the abuse and outrage of it. Before go- 
ing to Switzerland I had heard about the beauty 
of the Rhine. When I first saw it, I was greatly 
disappointed. I saw it again and yet again, and 
its character suffered still more in my esteem. 
Its waters were not simply turbid ; they were 
the color of mud. They looked as if they carried 
dissolved in their tide the uncleanness of the 
whole region through which they flowed. I saw 
the river once again, and this time I was fortunate. 
There it swept onward, green as an emerald, swift, 
full, living, beautiful, worthy of the awful heights 
from which it issued, worthy of the spirit of 
romance that dwells on its banks, its sleepless 
current matching well the Watch on the Rhine, 
worthy of the sea toward which it went on its 
way singing. Unfortunate experiences have led 
men to think poorly of human nature. One-sided 
views have led men to elaborate the scheme of 
the innate depravity of the race. The stream of 
our humanity discolored in the freshet of selfish- 
ness has stood for the whole character of the 



THE SERVANT OF ABRAHAM 137 

stream. In this way it has come to be an accepted 
truth that the unrenewed man is at heart a villain. 
He may be unconvicted ; he may be unconvict- 
able ; all the same the vicious nature is there. 

Against all this it must be said that human 
nature is the greatest thing we know. When we 
condemn ourselves, when we judge adversely our 
fellow men, we do so in the light of the ideal that 
shines in our own nature. When we complain 
of the mysterious order of the world, when we 
arraign the dumb indifference of the cosmos to 
human need, when we confess to a great moral 
disappointment as we survey the law of life and 
death under which we exist, we are searching 
in the universe for something as good and high 
as the soul of man. When we look for God, we 
look for the face that answers to our face and 
that is infinite, for the nature that corresponds 
to our nature and that is eternal. When we look 
for God, we look for something, for some one, wor- 
thy of the complete love and the perfect trust 
of our humanity. We condemn ourselves and 
others, we arraign the cosmos, we seek God, be- 
cause our nature is great and high ; our nature 
is great and high because God is evermore in 
it. This is what regeneration means ; it is the 
renunciation of the godless life as false to our 
humanity ; it is the affirmation of the life in 
God as the truth of our existence as men. 



138 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

When I think of the civilization that has come 
out of the mind and character of man, I cannot 
but confess the majesty of human nature. The 
race started with nothing, and with a heavy 
inheritance from the animal. Out of this brute- 
encumbered humanity came ideals for the gov- 
ernment of the personal, domestic, social, indus- 
trial, and political life of men. The ideals have 
grown into more and better ; and in their strength 
the race has risen out of the depths up on to the 
heights. Science, art, philosophy, and religion 
have arisen out of human nature to serve human 
existence. Great, surely, is the nature out of 
which these worlds of high and wondrous and 
serviceable thoughts have come. We owe to 
human nature all that we possess. Man is made 
by the entrance of God into the animal; the 
history of man is the record of immeasurable 
achievement, of immeasurable sacrifice, of im- 
measurable hope, and of dauntless courage in the 
face of immeasurable difficulties. Christianity is 
the sovereign possession of the race ; and it is 
the product of the humanity of Jesus Christ. 
When we read our nature and the nature of 
our fellow men in the presence of the humanity 
of Jesus, we cease to accuse the Maker of it, we 
no longer blaspheme God's order in the soul and 
his perpetual presence in it, we behold in awe 
and in penitence the Holy Ghost moving in the 



THE SERVANT OF ABRAHAM 139 

living stream of our being. For God and man 
are not two but one ; when we separate our- 
selves from Him, we do not follow our nature, 
we depart from it, and we sin against it. It is, 
therefore, a fresh introduction to human nature 
as it stands in the vision of God to look upon its 
pure representatives, to behold it mirrored in the 
clear morning traditions of a great race. I am 
persuaded that Christianity is to become the 
religion of man, because it is the sovereign ex- 
pression of the humanity in which God lives. 

It is a study in human nature to which we are 
introduced by the words of the text. The words 
are the words of the servant of Abraham. They 
present a piece of humanity worthy of serious con- 
sideration, and illustrative of the richness and 
truth of which human nature is everywhere capa- 
ble. This servant of Abraham is an expounder 
of the nature that we wear, an example of the 
religious use of existence, an inspiration to all 
high, disinterested, and peaceful bearing toward 
the Infinite and toward men. 

The twenty- fourth chapter of the Book of Gen- 
esis is one of the loveliest stories ever written by 
the hand of man. Those of you who are familiar 
with it will wish to read it again. Those of you 
who have never read it have in store a delightful 
experience. The chapter is complete in itself. 
Every word in it is as pure as a dewdrop, and 



140 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

the whole story shines with the peace and lofty 
light of a star. Every lover of youth must feel 
the beauty of it, the delicacy of it, its exquisite 
and rare touch. Every one who reveres noble 
parenthood must feel its pathos and dignity. 

Let us recall the outline of the story. Abra- 
ham is an old man, and his end is near. He has 
one bright, prophetic son. His lovely mother has 
been laid to rest. In this bright image of that 
vanished soul all the old man's love and hope are 
centred. The son is of age, and the time has 
come for him to found a home of his own. The 
venerable father, infirm and with the feeling of 
death creeping over him, aware that he cannot 
much longer guide the career of his prophetic son, 
calls his faithful servant, and asks him to put his 
hand under his master's thigh and swear that he 
will not take a wife for his son from the daughters 
of Canaan. They are sensuous, and wholly so. 
They are base-minded. They are without great 
ideals. They live from hand to mouth, immersed 
in sense and time, with no vision of the future, 
with no clear consciousness of the sacred office 
of their humanity, with no controlling and trans- 
figuring religious passion and hope. Go to the 
home of my kindred far away in Mesopotamia. 
There my brother has a child pure and exalted 
as my son. Ask that fair cousin to come and join 
her destiny with that of my boy. Then comes the 



THE SERVANT OF ABRAHAM 141 

touch of humor in the heart of the deepest and 
tenderest seriousness, the humor that shows how- 
little human nature in its essential features has 
changed in the course of the ages. The old ser- 
vant is willing to swear, and he is willing to go 
on the rather uncertain errand, but he mildly sug- 
gests : Perhaps the young woman will not come ! 
The father sees at once the point of this sugges- 
tion, and he replies : Well, if she does not come, 
you will be clear of your oath. But God will 
send his angel and dispose her to come. This is 
one of those high friendships that are made in 
heaven, that are created in human hearts by the 
breath of God. Go and see. 

I cannot pursue the story further. It all turned 
out with complete success, and with exquisite 
beauty, and according to the religious vision and 
faith of the father. There was the long jour- 
ney ; the unslackening perseverance ; the time 
at which the company arrived at its destination, 
the time at which the young women came out 
to water the flocks ; the beautiful picture of 
Rebecca at the well, her sweet courtesy, the depth 
and grace of Eastern hospitality, the grave dig- 
nity and high manner of the servant. There was 
the quiet joy of that home to which the message 
was delivered, the turning over of the question 
for Rebecca to answer, the appeal of the parents 
for delay, the insistence of the victorious servant 



142 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

upon dispatch, and the long, prosperous, happy 
journey back. But I must send you to the story 
as told by the inspired writer. It is one of the 
fairest poetic pictures of domestic life, touched 
and transfigured by love, lifted and glorified by 
religion, that is to be found in the records of 
mankind. 

We return to the servant. In him we find 
seriousness and humor, prompt and intelligent 
obedience, the mind to entertain a clear purpose 
and the will to carry it into complete realization, 
the fine sense of subordination and the high 
feeling of self-respect, the power of command, 
the gift of gracious speech, the character to in- 
spire confidence, the force that cannot be di- 
verted from its goal, the honor that stands guard 
over the fair young woman committed to his 
care, and the absolute disinterestedness of a soul 
that has but two fundamental desires, one the 
desire to serve, the other the desire to serve well. 

This delightful person describes in a strange 
way the conditions of his success. He says that 
he went, and he says that he was led. " As for 
me, the Lord hath led me in the way to the house 
of my master's brethren." These two ideas did 
not seem to him to be incompatible. Indeed, they 
seemed essential to the great and happy expe- 
rience through which he had passed. On the 
one side, everything seemed to come by Divine 



THE SERVANT OF ABRAHAM 143 

guidance and help ; on the other, human wis- 
dom, effort, and fidelity were assumed as indis- 
pensable. The two forces that brought success 
were the strenuous, self-dedicated soul, and the 
sense of God's help in this faithful soul. Look 
for a moment at this commanding combination. 

Here is a man who sets his heart upon suc- 
cess in business. That shining goal of business 
success stands out before him bright and allur- 
ing. How can it be gained? In the first place, 
he must join his race doing business in the world. 
No man can make business successful all by 
himself. Isolation from the trade of the world 
means failure. A man must be where he can 
buy from others and sell to others, where he 
can work with others. He must stand in the 
great centres of trade, he must be joined to 
his kind, if he would succeed. And more than 
that, he must in fellowship with his kind do 
his best. Here is a piece of work to be done. 
He must do it with all his might. He is 
working for a certain firm ; he must think and 
feel and work as if that firm were his own. 
There is a man in the path of success. Then 
comes the flood, then come the opportunities, the 
appreciations, the rewards, the sense that he is 
essential to the business that he is serving, and 
the man is carried on toward success. Shake- 
speare says : — 



144 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

" There is a tide in the affairs of men, 
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." 

That is true only upon condition that the busi- 
ness man is first of all in union with the business 
world, and that, in the very best meaning of the 
phrase, he is there for all that he is worth. 

Look at this essential combination in educa- 
tion. A man sets before him as the aim of his 
spirit an educated mind. That goal shines in the 
distance and commands his desire and excites 
his hope. But he can never become an educated 
man in separation from his kind. A mere star- 
gazer, a moonstruck person, one wandering 
alone in fields studying flowers, looking upon 
brooks and streams, lifting his eyes abroad upon 
the vacant earth and up toward the vacant sky, 
dwelling aloof from mankind, cannot compass 
a cultivated mind. The path to education is 
first of all through fellowship with one's kind. 
Think what a child learns from its child contem- 
poraries. Think what a precious and indispen- 
sable part of its education comes through play, 
through dreams, through high fictions, through 
the make-believe social world, through the amaz- 
ing conversations and communions of child with 
child all over the broad earth. When the child 
becomes youth, its contemporaries again are 
its educators. Youth plays upon youth through 
imagination, sympathy, and all subtle instincts ; 



THE SERVANT OF ABRAHAM 145 

and again there is a fresh development of intel- 
lectual power. When teachers are sought, what 
does that mean ? It means that the single human 
being is putting himself in league with the older 
generation, with the wiser, larger, better mind 
there. When it is a call for books, the same prin- 
ciple holds. What are books ? The most living 
things in the world. As Milton said, they are 
the precious life-blood of the master spirits of 
mankind. When you read the pages of a great 
book you are in communion with a great mind. 
Thus we see that education at every point iinj)lies 
fellowship with the minds of other men in a rising 
order of wisdom and power. And the person who 
is in communion with the mind of the world 
must again do his best. It is not enough for the 
child to be among children, for youth to be with 
youth, for the younger generation to be in the 
presence of the great and wise of the older gen- 
eration, or to have near them the highest books 
of the world. There must be individual alert- 
ness, receptivity, docility, eagerness, passion, 
persistence, the throwing open of the whole 
mind to the high object in devouring desire. 
What is the chief value, from an educational 
view, of that wonderful book " Up from Slav- 
ery " ? It is an entertaining, it is a marvelously 
human book. What is its philosophical value ? 
It is this. It shows the desperate effort of 



146 THBOUGH MAN TO GOD 

an eager soul to get out of the impotence of 
its own isolation, the desperate endeavor of 
a poor, starved life to get into fellowship with 
the great, resourceful and powerful race of man. 
When Booker T. Washington got to Hampton, 
he knew that he had reached the point where 
he could touch the soul of the world, where he 
could feel the soul of the world passing into 
him. His education was assured the moment 
that his weary feet crossed the threshold of that 
benign institution. 

We are now ready for the application of our 
principle to the life of the spirit. How can one 
acquire a noble character ? How can one secure 
the exaltation and refinement of one's human- 
ity? How can one realize within the soul the 
best that God has made possible for the soul ? 
That is the great question before us. And this 
much is clear, that it cannot be done in isolation 
from the best life of our time, from the highest 
endeavor of the world, from the Holy Spirit in 
human history. 

1. In this servant of Abraham there was 
first of all the aim, the errand. This old servant 
undertook a long journey, a journey from the 
Mediterranean sea-coast to Mesopotamia. But 
the goal was before him from the first. He 
knew what he wanted, and his life was commanded 
by the thing that he wanted. His was not an 



THE SERVANT OF ABRAHAM 147 

aimless, errandless life. It had a path as definite 
as the channel of the river, a goal as sure as the 
sea toward which the river moves. That aim, 
that errand, was the beginning of the servant's 
significant humanity. 

As I watch the lives of men, older and 
younger alike, the gravest defect I find at this 
point. On the serious side of existence men 
are largely without aim. What becomes of the 
stream that cannot find a channel, that has for- 
gotten its fountain, that has lost its vision of the 
sea v hither it is bound ? It becomes a swamp, 
a breeder of disease, a disseminator of death. 
And the man who has no sense of having come 
from God, no sense of an errand in life, no 
sense of a quest for what is worthy and endur- 
ing; the man who is aimless and errandless 
as a moral being, is a human swamp, a gener- 
ator of the plague that curses mankind. The 
day cannot begin until the sun is risen ; man- 
hood cannot begin until the will is up in a great 
resolve, until the soul is pursuing a great end. 

2. We must note the beauty of the end 
toward which that old servant journeyed. He 
traveled that he might bring that lovely cousin 
from between the two rivers to the shores of the 
Mediterranean. The Greeks had an alluring 
conception of the Muses. They were nine in 
number, supernatural in grace, all beauty, all 



148 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

purity, all joy. What did these immortal women 
represent? Beautiful ideals, beautiful ends, to 
be striven after, to be served, and in some 
measure secured. When Herodotus wrote his 
wonderful history, he wrote it in nine books 
to correspond to the nine Muses. Every book 
had hovering over it one of these exquisite 
superhuman figures, an ideal commanding the 
historian at his task. His whole work rose up 
in love and sincerity as an offering to the ideal. 
And if the father of history could see an ideal 
through a work of art, may we not see in that 
fair life between the two great rivers' the beauty 
of heart, the grace of spirit, the dignity of 
nature, the glowing, prophetic humanity which 
God made us to behold, to pursue, and finally to 
possess? Beautiful is the errand of the soul, 
fair and high is the end of man. Ye shall be 
perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Be 
ye imitators of God as dear children. Look up 
into the heights of your humanity, and you will 
see splendors that put to shame the starry sky. 

3. There was the romance of the servant's 
errand. We must think of him traveling those 
seven hundred miles singing every morning and 
every evening. He was on an errand of love ; 
fountains were playing in his heart, and birds 
were singing beside them. 

There have been many souls in history who 



THE SERVANT OF ABRAHAM 149 

have sought the Lord in this way. And I regret 
to add that there have been multitudes of those 
for whom the search for godliness, the quest for 
a sacred existence, for the beauty of the Lord our 
God, has been a dismal enterprise. Such carica- 
tures of the highest human mood we have seen 
and we have deplored. There is no darker or 
sadder shadow cast upon the loveliness of man's 
supreme privilege than that which is cast by 
these deplorable persons. Think not of them, but 
of their opposites. Think of the souls that have 
found the sovereign romance of existence in seek- 
ing and in serving God. Think of Paul traveling 
over the whole civilized world of his time, with 
the light of eagerness in his eyes, with the sense 
of a sublime romance in his heart, seeking every- 
where the Eternal grace, the Infinite love. What- 
ever may happen to the outward life, however 
we may fail or succeed there, let us keep our 
hearts forever young, forever singing on our way 
to God, traveling in the dawn, under the heat 
of noon, and in the dusk of evening on a high 
behest, with the gladness of a great and gracious 
enterprise in our souls, and with the sense of a 
vast and sacred romance upholding our lives. 

I must pause here to remind you that the goal, 
the lovely goal, the divinely romantic goal, can be 
found only along the royal road. We cannot find 
it in the saloon, in the gambling den, in the paths 



150 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

of shame. The beautiful Mesopotamian maiden 
lives not there. The ideal for which she stands 
to us does not shine over those dark waters, over 
those hideous wastes ; nor over the low book, the 
vile companion, nor over the ways devious and 
ugly that tempt youth to depart from honor. 
The church stands for all those forces of wis- 
dom, sentiment, prayer, and mystic response 
from the Highest that take the seeker after God 
into the fellowship of man at his best, that pour 
upon him the power of an availing humanity. Let 
the seeker after the highest for himself and his 
kind journey not alone ; let him fare forward in 
the great chorus of a singing humanity, in the 
great concert of the prophetic minds of history, 
in the mighty fellowship of the kings and priests, 
the heroes and saints, of mankind. In that vast 
and inspired communion the individual resolve 
will become like the inevitable will of God. 

As we part from this noble servant of a great 
man, we see again the clean and high and peace- 
ful heart in which true service forever issues. 
The man who took the oath of service and kept 
it, whose errand was unselfish from the beginning 
to the end, when he returned in the triumph of 
an accomplished mission, handed over to his 
master's son the vision of beauty that rode by 
his side those seven hundred immortal miles, and 
went his way in silence, but with the sense of 



THE SERVANT OF ABRAHAM 151 

honor in his heart, and the deep and dear con- 
tent which they gain who serve God well, and 
who are true in the great and small things alike 
to their solemn obligation to man. 

We go our several ways through time. Again 
and again we part from high friends. We seem 
to be left alone at last. But when we serve with 
truth, run our errand with honor, bring some 
work of beauty to its fair consummation, and 
pass into silence, and out of sight of men, we are 
not forsaken. Our nature is alive with the great, 
singing, prophetic voices of our service. The 
dignity of farewell is the note of the humanity 
that God has made self-sufficing. The disin- 
terested soul is the supreme possession ; the 
benignity of history, the beauty of the Lord 
our God, the grace of Jesus Christ, goes with it. 
The last and highest beatitude in this world 
of the faithful seeker after God and servant of 
man is an honorable soul, a great, rich, singing 
human heart, the power to go one's way in dear 
memory, in devout hope, in deep and divine 
content. 



VIII 



THE UNTROUBLED HEART 



Let not your heart be troubled : believe in God, believe also in me. 

John xiv, 1. 

Man's great and proper human interests are 
his treasure and his burden. They are his joy 
and they are his sorrow. You see a hen and 
her brood. There you have man and his essential 
and dear human interests. The brood are the 
delight of the mother bird ; they are also her 
dismay. Their safety is her peace ; their peril is 
her trouble. And her poor heart is seldom free 
from dread, for out there in the field the hawk 
may at any moment appear. The brood are so 
heedless, and her sheltering wings are so insuffi- 
cient. 

Who does not see in this image a picture 
of his own life? Certain things, certain causes, 
above all, certain persons, are inexpressibly dear 
to him. They are the living extensions of his own 
being. They are bone of his bone and flesh of his 
flesh. They are to him fairer and dearer than 
his own life. He goes abroad with them in the 
fields of time. They are his delight and they 
are his distress. They are his delight because they 



THE UNTROUBLED HEART 153 

make existence rich and great. They are his 
distress because they are insecure. 

Here we touch the deepest source of human 
anxiety. Love's alarm is the profoundest fear. 
It is the recurrent note in all loving hearts in 
all the relations of life. Parents tremble over 
the children of whom they are fond, and when 
children are worthy, they look toward their 
parents with a presentiment of trouble. It is so 
with noble friend and noble friend everywhere. 
So it was with the disciples. They loved their 
great Master with a desperate attachment, and 
now he was about to leave them. Oh, the possible 
pain of a loving heart ! How awful it is ! How 
can we allow ourselves to love uncertain lives 
when love's loss brings such inexpressible pain ? 
There is a figure that recurs several times in the 
Old Testament that impresses one deeply, — 
a bear robbed of her whelps. Poor beast ! who 
does not pity her ? Who does not see working 
through her fury the elemental passion of love ? 
If that brute heart could speak, what a wail it 
would send forth ! The desperate distress is all 
unutterable. Turn from the poor animal to man. 
Watch the face of King David as he receives 
the announcement of the fate of Absalom. " And 
the king was much moved, and went up to the 
chamber over the gate, and wept : and as he 
went, thus he said, O my son Absalom, my son, 



154 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

my son Absalom ! would God I had died for 
thee, O Absalom, my son, my son ! " What is 
one to do with this fearful capacity, this heart 
that loves, that loses, that suffers ? 

It must be said that this is no new question. 
It is the question of our humanity. The most 
urgent of all practical questions for a loving 
humanity is this : How can we reach the beati- 
tude of the untroubled heart ? That question is 
old, it is as old as man, and I must now mention 
several great historic answers to it. 

1. There is the answer of despair, — curse God 
and die. That is one of the oldest answers, and 
one of the most recent. It is the answer of the 
suicide. From how many defeated lives this 
answer has gone forth, no tongue can tell. It 
is indeed appalling to reflect how many hearts 
find existence unbearable. " End it when you 
will " is for many the only hope. Such despair is 
indeed seldom the product of pure sorrow. Sin 
has brought ruin to character. Life has become 
a waste wherein wander the tormenting presences 
born of an evil conscience. Jesus was in the wil- 
derness tempted of the devil. He could bear it 
because he was unf alien and true. These terrible 
lives are themselves the wilderness, and their 
misdeeds are their sole and intolerable compan- 
ions. Oftener than we think, this is the history 
of the life that ends itself in despair. There are 



THE UNTROUBLED HEART 155 

also many cases where disease is the cause. There 
are not a few overwhelmed with disaster. Still, 
there is no reason why we should refuse to look 
at the answer, whether it comes out of the heart 
of disease, or sudden over-mastering misfortune, 
or pure, irreconcilable sorrow. Despair is despair. 
Its answer is the same : — 

" O length of the intolerable hours ! 
O nights that are as aeons of slow pain ! 
O Time, too ample for our vital powers, 
Life whose woeful vanities remain 
Immutable for all of all our legions 
Thro' all the centuries and in all the regions, 
Not of your speed and variance do we complain. 
We do not ask a longer term of strife, 
Weakness and weariness and nameless woes; 
We do not claim renewed and endless life 
When this winch is our torment here shall close, 
And everlasting conscious inanition! 
We yearn for speedy death in full fruition, 
Dateless oblivion and divine repose." 

Out of books written in the dim dawn of his- 
tory, out of books written yesterday, and, more 
impressive still, out of thousands of human 
hearts suffering and dying at our side, comes 
this tremendous, ageless answer of despair. 

2. The Stoic answer next demands our atten- 
tion. The path to peace is through apathy. Let 
all strong desire, all affection, pass out of your 
nature, as the moisture of the earth evaporates 
under the burning power of the sun. Under the 



156 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

heat of the sun the earth becomes fruitless, care- 
less dust. Thus under the influence of reason let 
all affection, all kindness, all fondness, all pas- 
sionate attachment and devotion steam up out of 
your being until it shall become as dead and un- 
responsive as the desert. The desert can produce 
nothing ; the apathetic heart can love nothing. 
No harvest ever disturbs the peace of the desert ; 
no bereavement ever distresses the loveless heart. 
Where nothing is loved, nothing can be lost. 

The Stoics at their best were a great race. 
They were full of composure and high disdain. 
They accepted the humanities, but failed to under- 
stand them. They accepted them, and then tried 
to transcend them. They sought peace through 
reduction of desire. The sweet society in which 
the individual human being is set — the solitary 
in families — gave place to stern individualism. 
Epictetus seeks for personal freedom. Marcus 
Aurelius seeks for the government of his spirit ; 
but in this noble quest affection dies a slow death. 
The Stoics came to believe that their hearts un- 
manned them, that tenderness undermined their 
strength, that all sweet affections were in the 
way, that they must shed them as impedimenta. 
They sought strength, therefore, by the path of 
lovelessness. They sought peace by parting with 
their humanity. This is the great mistake of the 
Stoics. It is the mistake that many men are 



THE UNTROUBLED HEART 157 

making to-day. We all have seen young men and 
women going out into life with the most preeious 
of all possessions, a sympathetie, sensitive, pro- 
foundly feeling human heart. We have seen them 
eagerly and persistently devising ways and means 
for getting rid of their tenderness, for hardening 
the sensibilities, for casting out that painful but 
divine capacity for attachment. How shall we 
attain the untroubled heart ? The Stoic answers, 
Through apathy ; love less and less till sensibility 
shall pass away. 

3. The next answer that merits attention is 
the Epicurean answer. It is indeed strange that 
the Greek word used by our Master in the text 
is a favorite word with Epicurus and his dis- 
ciples. He uses the noun dTapa£ia, which means 
repose, untroubled repose, the repose of the 
untroubled heart. This beatitude Epicurus was 
seeking in that old world, just as we are seek- 
ing it in this new world. According to what plan 
did Epicurus seek it ? The way out of pain, he 
contended, is by the path of pleasure. He meant 
by pleasure not sympathetic, social pleasure, but 
individual, egoistic pleasure, refined or coarse, 
of the mind or of the body, as the case might 
be. Personally, Epicurus preferred the refined 
and intellectual pleasure. The way out of pain 
is by seeking, each individual for himself, the 
pleasure that gives him repose. 



158 THROUGH MAN TO GOB 

Does not that sound very much like a chap- 
ter from the social life of our time ? Epicurus is 
still with us, and he is far more popular than the 
Stoic. For what consolation do afflicted people 
seek, if they are not noble, if they are not com- 
manded by the heavenly vision ? They drown 
grief in pleasure. They seek escape from them- 
selves, from their losses, from their distresses. 
They drink, they gamble, they plunge into the 
vortex of a dissolute social life, they spend their 
hours of leisure in excess or in devising new 
excesses. They destroy their humanity. For the 
surest and shortest way to an empty and inhu- 
man heart is the path of individual self-seeking. 

This immolation of humanity, and especially 
of youthful humanity, so occupies the vision 
of serious lovers of their kind that the motive 
behind it is less clearly seen. The immolation 
is indeed appalling. The ruthless destruction 
of the native outfit in fineness °of feeling, in 
capacity for fond and enduring attachment, in 
golden enthusiasm, in high and tender hospi- 
tality of soul, is a calamity. Burns is nowhere 
more impressive than when he sings of a certain 
deadly misdeed : — 

" I waive the quantum o' the sin, 

The hazard o' concealing ; 

But, och ! it hardens a' within, 

An' petrifies the feeling ! " 



TIIE UNTROUBLED HEART 159 

This horror of a petrified humanity we see all 
about us. It is the most serious thing that we 
have to face, this blight of the race through 
pleasure in the successive generations of youth. 
For in each successive generation of youth there 
is a fresh apocalypse of God. Youth is a fresh, 
divine sunrise in humanity, and when all those 
fires are quenched, when that light is put out, 
God is in a serious sense banished from the 
contemporaneous world. We live upon the light 
that was, upon the light that shall be, but the 
present is overcast and heavy with gloom. 

This horror of our generation and of each 
new generation should not blind us to the main 
motive behind it. This world is still a troubled 
world. Human hearts are here doomed to much 
suffering. The longing for relief from pain is 
indestructible, and when misguided it drives men 
and women into fearful errors. These seekers 
after peace take the wrong way. It is their error 
that brings destruction. 

11 What, without asking, hither hurried Whence ? 
And, without asking, Whither hurried hence ! 

Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine 
Must drown the memory of that insolence ! 

" Earth could not answer ; nor the Seas that mourn 
In flowing Purple, of their Lord forlorn ; 

Nor rolling Heaven, with all his Signs reveal'd 
And hidden by the sleeve of Night and Morn. 



160 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

" Then to the Lip of this poor earthen Urn 
I lean'd, the Secret of my Life to learn : 

And Lip to Lip it murmur'd — ' While you live, 
Drink ! — for, once dead, you never shall return.' " 

Immolate your humanity, and faith becomes 
impossible. Men believe in God because of what 
they find in man. When personal manhood is 
gone, the power to see God in the manhood of 
the race is greatly impaired. By and by the man- 
hood of the race fades into a legend. The reality 
that remains is the interior horror of the disso- 
lute soul. Then comes the quest for relief in 
the abyss of vanities. 

4. In the fourth place, there is the Buddhist 
answer. The universe is against us. Fate is 
everywhere against the lover. The universe has 
decreed that everywhere and in all things the 
fond, human heart shall be defeated, and its hope 
forever blasted. The path into peace is the path 
of quenched, annihilated desire. Give it all up. 
Expect nothing, long for nothing. Fast and 
pray. Live in the reverent and compassionate 
service of your fellow men. Reduce your being 
to a vanishing-point, and expire at last, a desire- 
less spirit, in the eternal unconsciousness. 

" Take me, and lull me into perfect sleep ; 

Down, down, far-hidden in thy duskiest cave; 
While all the clamorous years above me sweep 
Unheard, or, like the voice of seas that rave 



THE UNTROUBLED HEART 1G1 

On far-off coasts, but murmuring o'er my trance, 
A dim vast monotone, that shall enhance 
The restful rapture of the involate grave." 

This mighty religion, the noblest of all faiths 
outside our own, has no hope for love. Its best 
word to love is, by the path of compassionate 
service, to cease to be. This is its best word 
and its last. There is no path to peace for those 
who love except the path of surrender. Dark 
and infinite despair is the thunder-looking sky 
that overhangs millions of our fellow men who 
love and suffer. The universe has for them no 
sympathy, no pity, no regard. The Eternal is not 
on their side ; the Eternal is against them. In 
such straits, what can the bravest and the deep- 
est-hearted do but serve and mourn, pity and 
pray, " lifting up dumb eyes to the silence of the 
skies," and by every high and sweet device to 
hasten the great deliverance : — 

" Come, lead me with thy terrorless control 
Down to our mother's bosom, there to die 

By abdication of my separate soul : 
So shall this single, self-impelling piece 
Of mechanism from lone labor cease, 

Resolving into union with the whole." 

5. Finally, there is the Christian way into the 
untroubled heart. That way is through belief in 
God, the Eternal lover of man. " Believe in God, 
believe also in me." That is the great imperative. 



162 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

Believe that the universe is on the side of the 
man who loves, that the universe is our Father's 
house, that his supreme gift is the loving human 
heart, that his overwhelming witness in time is 
the heart that loves Him and those whom He has 
made, that a community of loving hearts is God's 
great orchestra, set in the centre of this boundless 
and terrible immensity, rolling out the psalm 
that is in his heart. The community of lovers, 
the revelation of God, the Eternal lover, — that 
is the Christian way into the untroubled heart. 
How completely opposite to the Buddhistic faith 
is that ! " God is our refuge ! " The Eternal 
soul is our " present help in time of trouble ! " 
" Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be 
removed ! " " The Lord is my shepherd ; I shall 
not want. He maketh me to lie down in green 
pastures : he leadeth me beside the still waters. 
He restoreth my soul. Yea, though I walk through 
the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no 
evil ; for thou art with me : thy rod and thy staff, 
they comfort me." 

The Eternal God is the source of peace to the 
loving heart in the great Hebrew faith, and when 
we come to the Christian faith, Paul speaks for 
us : " Who shall separate us from the love of 
Christ ? " The whole world was dear to the Apos- 
tle, and he saw this dear world dying every day. 
You must enter into his hope and fear, his pos- 



THE UNTROUBLED HEART 1G3 

session and his sense of peril, if you would know 
the majesty of his words : u Who shall separate 
us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, 
or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or naked- 
ness, or peril, or sword ? Nay, in all these things 
we are more than conquerors through him that 
loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, 
nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things 
present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor 
height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be 
able to separate us from the love of God, which 
is in Christ Jesus our Lord." The heart of Christ 
is the revelation of the heart of God. From the 
power of this eternal love we cannot be torn away. 
The inseparability of man and the sacred pos- 
sessions of man's soul from the Eternal lover of 
mankind, — there is the way into peace. There 
is the peace that passeth understanding. 

Look now at Jesus as the incarnation of the 
truth of his own words, — u Let not your heart 
be troubled." When he uttered these words, he 
was on his way to prison, judgment, and death. 
He who deserved the best was on his way to 
receive the worst. He who had done the world the 
supreme service was about to be driven out of 
the world through ignominy, contempt, and cruci- 
fixion. And as he treads this via dolorosa, here 
is his song : " Let not your heart be troubled : 
believe in God, believe also in me." How great 



164 THROUGH MAN TO COD 

that song was, sweeping up against the blackness 
of the night ! We dishonor the Lord by our 
pity ! " Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for 
me, but weep for yourselves, and for your chil- 
dren ! " Jesus went forth a conqueror. His 
spirit is the mightiest that has ever appeared 
among men. 

What are the notes of the true hero ? Com- 
posure in awful peril, consideration for those 
weaker than he, the maximum of regard for 
others, the minimum of concern for himself, con- 
fidence in his cause, joy in living for it, peace 
in dying for it. These are the notes of the true 
hero ; these are the notes of Christ as he faces 
the end. He had himself an untroubled heart 
under the shadow of the cross. That is the first 
note of our hero. The second is that he thought 
of those who were weaker than he. Was it not 
a time for the disciples to be consoling the 
Master ? Was it not an hour when they should 
have turned to pour balm into his spirit? He 
thought of them, and gave them his compassion- 
ate, his divine regard. He thought of those who 
were weaker than he, even when their trial was 
infinitely less than his. As he went forth, — 
and this is another note of the hero, — there 
was in him the maximum of concern for others 
and the minimum of concern for himself. And 
finally, he went forth confident in his cause, 



THE UNTROUBLED HEART 1G5 

securely centred in the austere benignity of 
God's will, glad to live for it, and through the 
agony and bloody sweat lifted into eternal 
triumphant reconciliation to it. 

I call attention to the infinite humanity of 
Jesus Christ, and to his sublime heroism. Both 
his treasure and his strength were born of God, 
and in God he found eternal protection and 
peace. Our Lord's humanity was infinite in its 
tenderness, in its reach, in its burden, and he was 
full of peace in this perilous possession because 
he was full of God. " Father, into thy hands I 
commend my spirit." There is peace for man 
nowhere else. You recall Dante's great line : — 

11 In his will is our peace." 

This is the way home. We must not sur- 
render to despair; we must not seek strength 
through contempt of love ; we must not try to 
drown pain in forbidden pleasure ; we must not 
blaspheme the Soul of the universe, nor imagine 
that it is deaf to our prayers and dumb to our 
needs. We must keep our human hearts. The 
supreme possession^ the true human heart. In 
its possible depth, range, tenderness, and mystery 
past finding out, lies the image of the heart that 
beats eternally at the centre of the universe. 
Nothing but life can generate life ; nothing but 
love can create love. And whoever loves, even 



166 



THROUGH MAN TO GOD 



if lie fares forward, often in wild and solitary 
places and far from home, may know that God 
is with him ; for since God is love, his love is 
God. 

" Keep thy heart with all diligence ; for out 
of it are the issues of life." Keep it, increase it, 
carry it up to the heights, down to the depths, 
and abroad as wide as morning from evening; 
and if it seems that you cannot live in such a 
world as this with such a capacity for fondness, 
go with the prophets to the secret place of the 
Most High, hide with them under the shadow of 
the Almighty; walk with your Master on his 
way to the cross, and listen to his triumphant 
song : u Let not your heart be troubled : believe 
in God, believe also in me." 



IX 
BELIEF AND FEAR 

" The devils also believe and tremble." 

James ii, 19. 

This fact I have always regarded as highly 
creditable to the devils. They had sense enough 
to believe, and they had conscience enough to 
fear. Our devils are in a worse plight. They 
neither believe nor tremble. This is vastly to 
their intellectual and moral discredit. It shows 
them to be much lower down in the scale of 
existence than the beings to whom reference is 
made in the text ; it shows them to be nearly 
without sense and almost without conscience. 

My purpose is to read a lesson from the 
demons of St. James. Ministers are sometimes 
accused of preaching over the heads of their 
congregations, of selecting ideal persons, and of 
deducing the laws of life for ordinary mortals 
from the veritable saints and heroes of mankind. 
There can be no such complaint against the sub- 
ject for to-day. The beings about whom I am 
to reason are, to put it mildly, hardly up to our 
level. Few of us would care to be addressed in 
the vivid language of the text. We are ready 
to grant that we live far beneath our privilege as 



168 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

men, but hardly low enough to be classed with 
demons. Yet from these strange beings we may 
learn something. I am to speak of the intellect- 
ual and moral dignity implied in reasonable 
belief and fear. 

"What is the object of belief, the great, abid- 
ing, purified object of religious belief ? It is the 
world's best thought as wrought out by all the 
generations of religious genius. It is the solemn 
discovery and announcement of the highest and 
sanest minds of the race. There is the existence 
of one Supreme Being, in whom all men live, in 
whom all worlds consist. There is the conscious- 
ness of his goodness, the sense of his tender mer- 
cies, the assurance that He is the Eternal lover 
of man. There is the moral order of the world. 
Here it is forever true that God is not mocked. 
Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. 
He that soweth to his flesh shall reap corruption ; 
he that soweth to the Spirit shall reap life eternal. 
The character of the harvest depends upon the 
nature of the seed sown. The men who sow to 
the wind reap the whirlwind. Cause and effect 
constitute for the unjust a wheel of fire, and for 
the just a shining stairway to freedom and joy. 
No man can do evil and not suffer, no man can 
do good and not receive recompense ; the invio- 
lability of the moral order is absolute. There 
is in man the sense of obligation. He is under 



BELIEF AND FEAR 169 

bonds to do what is right, and he is answerable 
to the Highest for his deeds. That sense of ob- 
ligation may be abused, but it cannot be bribed ; 
it may be ignored, but it cannot be overawed ; 
it may be for a time suppressed, but it cannot 
be expelled. There is the permanence of the 
human spirit, its involution with the life of 
God. And there are the person, teaching, career, 
and achievement of Jesus Christ as the sover- 
eign expression of the religious belief of man- 
kind. 

In the presence of this august order of thought, 
vaster and more solemn than the starry heavens, 
we live. As we look up into its measureless 
heights, consider its shining and unfathomable 
fullness, think of it as the glorious firmament 
raised over our humanity by the sublimest spirits 
of our race, and by them in the creative strength 
of insight and love, and in an agony of earnest- 
ness and noble sorrow ; as we survey this sur- 
passing achievement of man at his highest, what 
shall be our attitude toward it ? Shall we deny 
and disregard, or shall we believe and fear ? 

I. What does belief in it imply as to the 
mind of the believer ? It implies many things, 
only a few of which I can name. It implies sen- 
sibility in the presence of this high human world, 
susceptibility to its vastness and beauty. In 
a way, belief implies the power to take it in. 



170 THROUGH MAN TO GOB 

There is doubtless much superficial belief. Few 
indeed reflect in a rational way the great beliefs 
of the gospel. Yet these beliefs are in the feel- 
ings, in the instincts, in the sympathies, of every 
genuine believer; they are in his heart, and he 
knows that they are there, even as the sailor 
knows that the full moon and the great stars 
have their image in the sea through which the 
ship that absorbs his attention sails. Thus God 
has set eternity in the heart of sincere and 
believing men. 

Unbelief is much more likely to be shallow. 
It does not start from the great premise that 
something must be true. It does not heed the 
fact that on the whole the race is a believing race. 
It does not pause over the weakness of the indi- 
vidual thinker in comparison with the strength 
of the whole body of creative historic thinkers. 
Unbelief does not dream that it is as impossi- 
ble for the individual mind to replace the best 
thought of the race upon the fundamental things 
of faith as it would be for the individual person 
to wipe out of existence all government, all laws, 
all social customs, all business methods, all dis- 
coveries, all adaptations of science to the task 
of living, and in absolute independence of 
their influence, to put in their room something 
worthier. We inherit our human world. We 
inherit business, science, art, literature, social cus- 



BELIEF AND FEAR 171 

toms ; we inherit our language, our country, our 
religion. We inherit to use and to improve ; but 
our first duty is to measure, if we can, the great- 
ness of our inheritance. The human world that 
we have inherited is infinitely rich. The unbe- 
liever does not take it in. He rarely gives the 
things of faith a chance to speak for themselves. 
His denial is apt to be extempore ; his unbelief, 
even at its best, is unsympathetic, and it is 
always in danger of shallowness. 

The profound believer reverses this process. 
He sees the magnitude and impressiveness of the 
religious interpretation of existence. He opens 
his intelligence to its appeal. He allows it to 
speak for itself ; he allows it to reflect itself in 
imagination as the great lake reflects calmly 
and patiently the shining order of the midnight 
sky. He knows that he is doing intellectual jus- 
tice to Christian faith. He knows that he has 
the power to take it in. He knows that its 
magnitude and splendor give range and lustre 
to his intelligence. So much he can say in favor 
of his belief. 

The radical believer takes another step. He 
accustoms himself to imagine what the race would 
be without faith. He denudes the race of its 
faith in God, its belief in a moral order, its sense 
of obligation, its hope of endless life, its vision 
of Christ and his kingdom of love. He pictures 



172 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

to himself what the racial intellect would be, if 
all high faith were extinguished ; what the racial 
heart would be, if all the sweet affections, all the 
generous sympathies, all the ennobling hopes, all 
the hallowed worlds of feeling inspired by Chris- 
tianity, should be consumed ; what the racial will 
would be, if all the great incentives to righteous- 
ness originating in the Christian view of existence 
should be abolished ; what the racial instincts 
would become, if there could be no impact 
upon them through the consciousness of God, of 
the Holy Spirit. Thus the awful picture rises 
before the serious believer of a humanity denuded 
of its religious faith, bereaved of its ideals, shorn 
of its sovereign spiritual possession, robbed of its 
proper humanity, and smitten with everlasting 
sterility and sorrow. It is the vision of the liv- 
ing, beautiful, fruitful earth turned into a desert. 
The wilderness and the solitary place are every- 
where. Death has taken the place of life, and 
the cheerful and hopeful world of men has sunk 
into the kingdom of the brute. Denude the earth 
of its forests, and you end its prevailing appeal 
to the clouds for the early and the latter rain, 
for seedtime and harvest, for the storms and 
tempests that keep it fruitful and beautiful ; de- 
nude the race of its highest expression, its fairest 
growth, its religious faith, and you deny to it the 
dews of heaven, you isolate it from the gracious 



BELIEF AND FEAR 173 

touch of the Infinite, you smite it with sorrow 
and despair. 

The thoughtful believer takes still another 
step. When he has called in question the funda- 
mental things of faith, turned religious vision 
into a dream, reduced the great insights of Chris- 
tianity to an order of pious hallucinations, a sys- 
tem of beautiful but groundless imaginations, a 
benign but baseless fabric of poetic genius in the 
teeth and eyes of the inflexible, protesting reality 
of the world, he recalls one solemn obligation 
of the reasoner. He must not only pull down ; 
he must also build up. He must not only deny 
the truth of belief ; he must also prove the truth 
of his unbelief. Prove that there is no God. 
Prove that God is not good. Prove that there 
is no moral world, no moral universe. Prove that 
man is not under moral obligation to the Eternal. 
Prove that there is no permanence to the human 
spirit. Prove that the character of life here has 
no consequences of weal or woe beyond the grave. 
Prove that Jesus Christ and his vision and passion 
and influence do not tell the highest truth about 
man, and about man's universe. Prove our denial. 
That is impossible. If you could prove your denial, 
you would be omniscient, you would be God. 
Can you prove that this earth is the only world 
in infinite space that is the abode of life ? Can 
you prove that there is intelligence nowhere in 



174 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

the universe except in man ? Can you prove that 
love beats only in the human heart? Can you 
prove your denial that love has in it the sugges- 
tion of the Infinite, as there is in day the reference 
to the " sweet approach of even or morn " ? These 
propositions cannot be proved. They presuppose, 
in order to prove them, infinite knowledge. They 
may be true, and they may not ; lower than that 
mood you cannot reasonably go. 

At this point men fall back into the despair of 
knowledge, the despair of clear and reasonable 
opinion. They give up the problem of existence 
as beyond them, as beyond man. They take 
refuge in ignorance. They surrender the hope 
of a reasonable view of human life to absolute, 
unmitigable mystery. The race becomes an infant 
crying in the night, with no language but a cry. 
They cannot trust the full meaning of this com- 
parison. They cannot see in man the power of the 
infant, the awakening, moving force of that cry ; 
they cannot discern in the infant with no lan- 
guage but a cry, round whom the whole house- 
hold is ordered in tender and anxious ministry, 
the suggestion that around the soul and its need, 
and in its pathetic, inarticulate appeals, there 
gathers a divine universe, and a love that can 
save even when it is not understood. This strange 
mood cannot last. It is an exaggeration of the 
frailty of man. We are not so badly off as an 



BELIEF AND FEAR 175 

infant crying in the night. It is a mood wanting 
in courage, and man is a being essentially cour- 
ageous. When his hour comes, man can take his 
fate with composure and hope. He is born to 
contend, and not to surrender, to overcome, and 
not to suffer defeat. And a race conscious of 
the gift of insight, sensible of the growth of 
knowledge, aware of the marvelous rapidity with 
which at favorable moments nature yields up 
her eonian secrets, will not surrender because 
the puzzle is great, because the battle is severe. 
Agnosticism is doomed for these two reasons. 
First, it is an exaggeration of man's impotence. 
Second, it leaves no room for the full display of 
man's courage and hope. Man has in his long 
wrestle thrown a thousand giants supposed to be 
invincible. He will never own defeat. He will 
quail before no contest. He will wrestle the 
secret from the Infinite, as Jacob did, and in the 
morning light go forth, the possessor of an Eter- 
nal blessing. 

To this, then, the intellectual problem of be- 
lief comes. Shall I march or refuse to march 
with my kind ? Shall I or shall I not cast in my 
part with humanity as interpreted and as carried 
up out of the depths on to the heights by the 
supreme spirits of the race? What shall be my 
attitude toward the loftiest wisdom, the purest 
sentiment, the wisest and bravest character in 



176 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

human history ? Shall I decline to join this high 
fellowship? Shall I make light of the tremen- 
dous thing that it is for the individual man to go 
against the race at its best ? Or shall I say : I 
was born a man, I suffer as a man, I love as a 
man, I go as a man under the heat and burden 
of the day, I shall die as a man. I have been a 
participant in the general life of my kind ; let me 
become a communicant in the highest experiences 
of my race. Let me cast in my lot with man in 
everything worthy; let me cast in my lot with 
the humanity that entertains the heavenly vision, 
that repents, that obtains forgiveness, that lifts 
itself up in the moral grandeur of struggle and 
hope, that goes in the pathos of a mournful weak- 
ness, and in the solace of a quenchless faith ? 

II. What shall be the moral attitude toward 
this purified world of belief? In the text, on 
the part of the demons, it is fear ; and I wish to 
show the moral dignity of that attitude. As 
belief implies that something is true, so fear 
implies that something is precious. If nothing 
were dear to man, and if what is dear were in no 
danger, there would be no place for fear. Life 
is smitten with fear because it is precious, and 
because it is under ceaseless menace. When the 
mother bends over her sick child, when she sees 
that child as a young man going into a strange 
city, when she sees his nature putting forth its 



BELIEF AND FEAR 177 

full power in the presence of a thousand seduc- 
tions, when she is aware that he is bearing re- 
sponsibilities heavier than man can endure, 
when she sends him into battle for his country, 
in each case she fears for him because he is 
dear to her, and because his life is in danger. 
And so it is throughout the animal kingdom, 
throughout the human kingdom, wherever you 
find these two things, — something that is pre- 
cious, and what is precious in peril. Reasonable 
fear is the quickened pulse or the fever heat 
that sounds the alarm, that calls attention to 
grave conditions, to possible loss. Reasonable 
fear for others is the beacon light that flashes 
its warning to the mariner over the wild sea, 
or the fog-buoy that in the darkness moans its 
monotonous dirge. Precious is your life, there- 
fore that wild pulse, that strange fire, must be 
heeded ; precious is the life of others, therefore 
that solemn light, that mournful cry, must not 
be disregarded. 

The fact that one is sinking as a moral value, 
that one is becoming less of a man, that the 
highest qualities in one's character are suffering, 
that in one's humanity one is losing strength 
and tone, is a legitimate object of fear. What 
shall we think of the man who is not afraid to 
lose worth, who has no dread of moral descent, 
to whom the brutal life that is coming upon him 



178 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

by stealth is no horror ? Can you think of any 
mood more degraded ? Oh, the men who have no 
pity upon themselves, whose precious spiritual 
being is departing and who are without fear ! 
As we look at them, we recall Christ's words : 
" Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, 
and for your children." Men sorrow over the 
wrong things. They are grieved over material 
loss, over outward reverse and disaster. The 
nobler among them weep over the sorrows and 
losses of the good, and the tragedies that some- 
times involve the sublimest lives. These are 
not properly objects of sorrow. These men have 
within their hearts the eternal consolations. 
Christ upon the cross did not weep for himself ; 
his soul went out in pity for the poor, brutal 
men who were putting him to death : " Father, 
forgive them, for they know not what they do." 
Milton sings for all the brave when, in recount- 
ing his sorrows, he discovers his conquering 
sense of God and declares his singing voice 

" Unchanged 
To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil days, 
On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues ; 
In darkness, and with dangers compass'd round, 
And solitude; yet not alone while thou 
Visit'st my slumbers nightly, or when morn 
Purples the east." 

Fear of sin, fear of the loss of worth, fear of 
the loss of the ideal, fear of any surrender to 



BELIEF AND FEAR 179 

lust or shame, a deep-seated and abiding fear 
of the mutilation of one's humanity, of every- 
thing that hardens the heart, is a reasonable 
fear, and the man who is destitute of this fear 
is sinking into the kingdom of the brute. 

The thought that one's family may lose in 
moral vigilance and vigor, that one's children 
may fail to live in their finer instincts, that they 
may miss the best training in conscience and 
in will, is surely something worthy of fear ; 
the dread lest those for whose existence you are 
responsible shall grow up with no share in 
the world's best vision of God and man, with 
no participation in the world's highest feeling 
toward the universe and human life, with no 
place in the sublime fellowship of the servants 
of righteousness in all generations, with no com- 
munion with the saints and heroes of the earth, 
is surely enough to fill with anxiety the heart of 
the reasonable parent. What is the best thing 
that you can do for your children ? Enable 
them to live in strength when you are gone. 
Make them able to meet with serious courage 
and hope the inevitable in existence. Accustom 
them to draw upon the Eternal for strength, 
serenity, and joy. Cultivate within them the 
habit of reasonable trust in God. Give your 
children faith in the moral meaning of existence, 
in the moral purpose of history, in the moral 



180 THBOUGH MAN TO GOD 

character of God, and in the Gospel of Jesus 
Christ as the sovereign expression of these 
things. 

When we look at our country, and still more 
when we regard our humanity in its relation to 
the universe, the same principle holds good. We 
are afraid of unrighteousness because we know 
that it will entail untold dishonor to the land 
that we love, inexpressible suffering to our kind . 
Job said : " When I consider, I am afraid." Seri- 
ous thought over the preciousness to man of a 
noble soul, and a high bearing toward the Infinite 
in the heart of this seductive world, is surely 
troubled with fear. The mother is in perpetual 
subdued alarm over the helpless, prophetic in- 
fant in her arms. It is so precious and so frail, 
and a thousand terrors surround its life. When 
she considers, she is afraid ; and her fear is the 
impulse to a ministry that shields and saves. 
When we consider the unimaginable calamities 
that may issue from an evil will, from inhuman 
feeling, from wanton selfishness of any form ; 
when we allow the unmeasured possibilities of 
suffering as the consequence of iniquity to 
reflect their black and terrible character in the 
mind, when we try to calculate the whole awful 
issue of a loveless existence, it can only be with 
fear. And the depth of our fear will measure 
the height of our humanity. The man without 



BELIEF AND FEAR 181 

reasonable fear comes near being the worst of 
men. He cares neither for God nor Kis kind. 
The man who counts existence precious, and 
who sees the peril encompassing it, who loves 
his kind and who marks its temptations, must 
fear to do wrong, must tremble at the issues 
of wrong-doing, must pray that his mood and 
that of his brothers may be : How can I do this 
great wickedness and sin against God ? 

Thus belief and fear in the presence of the 
purified faith of mankind are a sign of intel- 
lectual power, and a witness of moral elevation. 
We dare to hope, even for the rich man who 
found himself in Hades and in torment, when 
we find him concerned about his brethren still 
living in the earth. There is hope for the man, 
in torment because of his sin, who still loves 
his brethren, and who desires to keep them out 
of that torment. The power to picture the stern 
truth of the universe, to feel the preciousness and 
the peril in the life of his kindred, his solemn 
apprehension of the immutable order of God, 
and his concern for those whom he has left in 
the upper world, lift Dives, in comparison with 
brutish men, into moral grandeur. How immea- 
surably higher in the scale of being this man is 
than those who have no beliefs about the moral 
order of the world, and who are without moral 
fear either for themselves or for their fellow 



182 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

men ! How low down is intellectual inhospital- 
ity toward the highest moral faith ; how repul- 
sive is indifference to it! How near to the brute 
man descends when he loses the power to reflect 
the sovereign spiritual thought of the world, its 
purified vision of the meaning of man and his 
universe ! 

It is the brutish mind that is the tragedy of 
the world. The inhuman lives are the supreme 
sorrow. When they die who with their human- 
ity have served humanity, we employ Milton's 
words, we give "immortal thanks." We cry 
with strong delight : — 

" Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail 
Or knock the breast ; no weakness, no contempt, 
Dispraise or blame, nothing but well and fair, 
And what may quiet us in a death so noble." 

When they live whose humanity has become 
inhumanity, whose mood has hardened into 
indifference to all faith and all righteousness, 
then we must grieve. That is the last and worst 
phase of man's career under the sun. The rea- 
son that is impotent in the presence of the 
highest religious thought and the conscience that 
is callous in the presence of the sovereign obli- 
gation of man are the lowest limit that human 
nature can reach. So long as men have intellect 
enough to reflect the august moral order of exist- 
ence and conscience enough to fear it, so long as 



BELIEF AND FEAR 183 

they are not lower down than the demons of St. 
James, so long as upon the vision of the world's 
supreme insight and character they believe and 
tremble, there is ground for hope. Nothing but 
insensibility to the highest, insensibility harden- 
ing into permanence, is ultimately discouraging. 
A frozen, an extinct humanity is the really ter- 
rible abyss. Great wickedness with great sensi- 
bility of itself, and with great eagerness toward 
the highest, is at an immeasurable distance from 
the final horror of a dead humanity. " Dost 
thou not even fear God, seeing thou art in the 
same condemnation ? And we indeed justly ; for 
we receive the due reward of our deeds : but this 
man hath done nothing amiss. And he said, 
Jesus, remember me when thou comest in thy 
kingdom." Oh, how faith in the Highest expands 
and ennobles the intelligence ! Oh, how awe in 
the presence of the Highest cleanses the soul, 
makes the thief ready, as by the renewing hand 
of God, for the great salutation and assurance : 
" Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be 
with me in Paradise." 



THE INHERITANCE OF FAITH 

" Blessed be the Lord God of our fathers." 

Ezra vii, 27. 

When we first think of it, faith seems to be some- 
thing with which sentiment and tradition have 
absolutely nothing to do. Faith is the personal 
vision of God. The vision of other men, of other 
generations, would seem to have little to do with 
this personal beholding of the Eternal. Can any 
dearest friend see or hear, taste or handle, for 
one ? If one is blind, what avails it that other 
men see ? If one's eyes are wide open upon the 
beauty of the world, what need is there for 
pondering the things that other eyes have seen ? 
Is not the sight of the eyes independent of 
history ? And is not the sight of the soul inde- 
pendent of the past ? If God is our refuge and 
strength, a very present help in trouble, need we 
consider what He has been to other generations ? 
Is not faith born anew in the personal soul ? Is 
not God sufficient as He stands in the vision 
of the individual mind ? Is not the idea of 
the inheritance of faith a contradiction, like the 
idea of the inherited knowledge of Greek, or 



THE INHERITANCE OF FAITH 185 

mechanics, or navigation, or war, or any other 
subject that men master by personal effort? Is 
not faith a kind of inspiration, and, as in breath- 
ing, must not every man gain it for himself? 
What addition can be made to the reasonableness 
and power of belief in God, by confessing Him 
as the Lord God of our fathers ? 

When the sun comes up in the east and floods 
the world with light, and when it goes down in 
the west and leaves the world transfigured in its 
evening glow, we think mainly, if not exclu- 
sively, of the sun. We lift our thought to the 
light, we give thanks for the light, we praise it, 
and we rejoice in it. And all that is well, but 
it is not the whole truth or the true attitude 
toward the phenomenon. The sun comes through 
leagues of soft and sweet and wholesome and 
blessed atmosphere, the atmosphere in which 
our world rolls and lives, and through the service 
of the atmosphere there is daily wrought the 
miracle of morning and evening. God is the 
sovereign reality of the universe ; the thought 
of God is the sovereign thought of mankind. It 
is the master light of all our seeing ; it is the 
illumination and consolation of the race. And we 
do well, when we think of life's last refuge and 
beauty, to lift our thought to the Infinite Father 
of men. And yet this is not the whole truth. 
God comes to the individual believer through 



186 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

the race of believers ; He comes through our 
humanity, through its need, its aspiration, its 
love, its struggle, its sorrow, its tears, its hope; 
through its pathos and its prophecy ; its whole 
sphere, its whole history. The heart, not of the 
individual man, but of the historic man, is the 
great prism in which is unfolded the glory of God. 
We stand in a great solidarity of distress. 
Because we are men, we inherit defect and disa- 
bility of many kinds, we inherit ills of various 
sorts, we are fated to certain woes, and we are 
doomed to death. The words of Paul are for- 
ever sounding in our ears, "As in Adam all 
die ! " All die because all stand in solidarity 
with the first man. This half-truth is to-day 
crushing the heart out of thousands. Men see 
the inheritance of sorrow and nothing else ; 
they read the doom of death and nothing more. 
The race has power to transmit the reign of 
sorrow, it has the power to perpetuate the au- 
thority of death. " As in Adam all die " is the 
half-truth under which men to-day groan. Why 
not recognize the other half of the truth ? We 
stand in a solidarity of privilege. We inherit 
health and vigor. We inherit a world whose 
productive power has been heightened under the 
cultivation of many generations. In a large 
sense we inherit the ways and means of doing 
business, the ways and means of living; we in- 



THE INHERITANCE OF FAITH 187 

herit the deepest wisdom, the purest sentiment, 
the highest ideals, of the loftiest souls of all 
time. We inherit the capacity for love, the love 
of man and the love of God. We inherit our 
religion. Before it becomes ours through per- 
sonal choice and character, we belong to it by 
descent. It becomes ours by personal endeavor ; 
we are its children by nature. It is in our 
blood and bone, our brain and tissue. Our 
being is alive with the benign power of a his- 
toric religion. We are in debt to the race ; it is 
an infinite debt. It is, therefore, unjust to say 
that we stand only in a solidarity of pain. We 
stand in a solidarity of sorrow and of joy, in 
the discipline and in the hope, in the struggle 
and in the conquest, of existence. The whole 
truth is this : " As in Adam all die, so in 
Christ shall all be made alive." 

There are two great tendencies of our nature 
that seem to me very significant and beautiful, 
the tendency toward our kindred and the tend- 
ency toward our kindred's God. These tend- 
encies are not fatalistic. They do not exclude 
self -direction. They are the basis of it. 

1. There is the tendency toward our kindred. 
It is a movement of heart full of utmost rich- 
ness, utmost meaning, and with a divine depth 
of tenderness in it. It has three epochs. The 
child is the example of the first epoch. It lives 



188 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

and moves and has its being in its home, in its 
mother's love, in its father's strength. How 
easily it looks at the world through parental 
eyes ! How easily it thinks as its father and 
mother think, feels as they feel, takes on the 
tone of their thought and the color of their char- 
acter ! How easily it is moulded by them into 
the spirit of the home! And I need not pause 
to remark the world of joy and strength that 
comes out of this discipline to the fortunate 
child, or the world of delight and solace that 
comes out of it to the wise and reverent parent. 
Childhood is succeeded by youth. Here is the 
second epoch in this tendency. In youth there 
is, however it may be disguised or chastened or 
sweetened, a temporary alienation from parental 
life. New worlds dawn upon youth, new interests, 
new fascinations, new friendships, bright worlds 
into which the young soul passes. However fine 
and true and tender the young soul may be, there 
is a decided alienation from the dear, early home. 
The vast and beautiful world of love opens to 
the young ; they pass into it with music in their 
hearts. Father and mother are no longer all- 
sufficing ; the son and daughter found homes for 
themselves. The time was when the old home 
with father and mother in it was the centre of 
existence, and now it has become incidental. 
The new home is the centre of existence, and 



THE INHERITANCE OF FAITU 189 

all other interests and relations wait upon this. 
There is this undeniable, inevitable, pathetic 
alienation of the dear heart of childhood from 
father and mother. Childhood has become youth, 
and has gone into another world, a world of its 
own. It is all as it should be. It is inevitable. 
This process, however, presents the supreme 
problem of life. How the passage is made, in 
what spirit, from the old world into the new, is 
of infinite moment to youth. 

There is the third epoch. This describes the 
return to the old home. The young mother, in 
the presence of her growing children, with the 
urgent, anxious problems of her family forever 
before her, standing under the burden of her 
responsibility to these souls, — how inevitably 
she goes back to her own mother, whether liv- 
ing or dead, communes with her in spirit, raises 
from the grave worlds of forgotten wisdom, and 
recovers so far as she can all the healing, in- 
fluential ways of that vanished mother ! The 
father lives anew in the maturing manhood of 
his son. Twenty or thirty years after the father 
is in the unseen world, his intellect and will, his 
wisdom and courage, his hope and power, are the 
resource and power of his son. In the strength 
of his dead father the son is able to run through 
a troop and to leap over a wall. Whether in 
the flesh or in the spirit only, the son is again 



190 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

in the early home, talking with his father. And 
this goes on to the end of life. We spend 
our last years in reuniting our separated lives 
with the beloved who are gone, in making fast 
our souls to the dear souls from whom we have 
been parted. An old man of ninety-five was once 
asked how the distant past seemed to him. The 
old man replied : " Every night when I retire I 
can hear my mother's voice, I can feel her touch, 
and I can hardly believe that more than a few 
years have intervened since I was a child under 
her heavenly care." We recall the exquisite 
touch with which Ian Maclaren closes his de- 
scription of the doctor of the old school. He 
is dying, and his wandering thoughts are back 
with his mother. He is a boy again, in the early 
home, learning his psalm that he may repeat it 
to his mother, calling to her when he thinks 
that he has it, and going hence at her side with 
the great whisper upon his lips : " And in God's 
house forevermore my dwelling place shall be." 
And that you may not think this is mere fancy, 
let me remind you of Carlyle's last hours as 
reported by the nephew and niece who were with 
him, and who cared for him with great tender- 
ness. When the old man was dying, he thought 
his niece was his beautiful mother once more by 
his side ; he put his arms round her, spoke to 
her as to his mother, and wept as in a mother's 



THE INHERITANCE OF FAITH 191 

consoling- and hallowing presence. He took his 
nephew for his father, and spoke again as in the 
noble presence of the old mason of Ecclefechan. 
Carlyle at eighty-five is dying, not in Cheyne 
Row, Chelsea, London, but in the humble home 
in that little village in Dumfriesshire, Scotland. 
And this return we all make, when we are true 
to our humanity. We all come back at last to 
our kindred ; we are finally gathered to our 
fathers, as in the pathetic and wondrous words 
of the Bible. We begin our being in home, in 
the heart of it. For a little we are alienated 
from that early home because we have founded 
one of our own. Then by the high and solemn 
interest of our new home, by its burden, its 
sanctity, and its hope, we are brought back to the 
voice that we first heard, and to the heart that 
first loved us. If Rachel still weeps for her 
children, she shall not weep forever. If she still 
refuses to be comforted because they are not, 
she shall not be comfortless forever. They shall 
come again to her, they shall gather round her, 
they shall greet her with their bright eyes and 
their true hearts, they shall be with her again, 
and with her forever. 

2. There is the other tendency of which I 
spoke, the tendency to return to our father's God 
and to rest in Him. For religion is as natural 
toward the Eternal as love in our homes. It is 



192 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

the feeling for the Infinite to whom we stand 
as creature to Creator, as dependent to Abso- 
lute, as child to the Eternal Father. That there 
should be feeling of a certain kind for God is 
as natural, as inevitable, as that there should be 
feeling of a certain kind for a father or mother. 
And that we should go with our kindred here, 
that we should discover a tendency to trust and 
serve the Lord God of our fathers, is surely not 
at all strange. Here again we note, in a general 
way, three epochs. 

Look at the child once more. It lives in the 
life of its parents. It looks out upon the world 
through their eyes. It beholds the universe in 
their vision. It kneels with them in prayer ; its 
first devout utterance is through the Lord's 
Prayer. It is led in reverence to Jesus as the 
great Teacher. It unfolds its life in the con- 
sciousness of God. It lives and moves and has 
its being in the circle of Christian faith ; it 
accepts God as it accepts the common heritage of 
existence. Kindred is one of the precious facts 
in the existence of the fortunate child. With 
the sense of kindred comes the happy experience 
of good, the consciousness of life as beloved. 
And God, the lover of children, their defender 
and friend, is bound up with the deep and loving 
hearts of kindred. In this way the normal and 
fortunate child comes to believe in God. 



THE INHERITANCE OF FAITH 193 

How natural religion is to such a child ! How 
easily its mind is turned into the stream of a 
mother's devotion ! How easily and completely 
it joins in the reverence and faith of the home ! 
How thoroughly such a child feels that religion 
is part of the life of the home, that God is the 
soul of the world's order, beauty, and being ! 
How touching it is to listen to the prayers of 
a child ! They are so real. They so completely 
carry the child into the divine world. This is 
the first epoch. The child awakes in the deep, 
sweet, mystic sense of the Lord God of its 
fathers. This God is part of its treasure ; He is 
to be loved, trusted, rejoiced in, as the song-bird 
rejoices in the deep, infinite sunshine. 

Then follows youth, and this child-religion is 
transcended. I have never known a person in 
whom there was not some kind of a break with 
the past when youth came. The social world is 
one great disturber. It absorbs the young life, 
feeds it with excitements that make religious 
feeling less apt to flow, that make religious feel- 
ing seem tame when it does flow. The world of 
books and of intellectual problems rushes in to 
engage and to perplex the awakening mind. The 
youth begins to question and to doubt. A nega- 
tive mood takes the place of the old positive 
faith, and a cold heart waits upon this negation. 
The world of business puts in its great claim. 



194 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

Manhood has a struggle here. New prospects 
dawn upon youth. New ambitions rise in its 
heart ; glorious seas of passion come beating 
in, as from the Infinite. Here is a world to be 
conquered, to be possessed, to be enjoyed. It 
tends to break up that old world of childhood ; 
it is apt to throw into insignificance the reali- 
ties of faith. Religion gives way to a strenuous 
humanity; it is not distinctly seen among the 
forces that make up the great, seething world 
of youth. Religion, at this period, for many 
of our finest youth, fades into a memory, — a 
sweet, a gracious, a hallowing memory, but only 
a memory. Time, sense, temporal ends, earthly 
interests, worldly ambitions, human tastes, at- 
tainments, passions, and hopes make the troubled 
but tremendous world of youth. 

One thing must be said here. The problem 
presented at this period of transition is one of 
the most fundamental and vital in human exist- 
ence. Whether we shall be victorious or de- 
feated, successes or wrecks ; whether our human- 
ity shall be a blessing to us or a curse ; whether 
all the grace and melody shall go out of it, or 
it shall become richer in great, singing voices 
with the passing years, depends upon how we go 
into our new world of enterprise, of thought, of 
love and joy and suffering. Shall we master this 
new world in the name of the Highest? Shall 



THE INHERITANCE OF FAITH 195 

we possess and govern it in the name of the 
ideal ? There is no deeper or more vital ques- 
tion than that. Look at that fair young woman 
floating out from the piety of her kindred into 
an enchanting world of her own. Is she to go 
from good to better, from better to best ; or 
is she to become a poor, soiled butterfly on the 
dusty ways of life? Look at that young man 
going forth radiant and resolute as the morning ? 
Is he going to victory or defeat ? 

The third epoch is dependent upon our be- 
havior in this second epoch. If we keep truth 
with ourselves during this period of alienation 
from the historic Christian faith, if in the world 
of our wild and serious interests we keep our 
heart with all diligence, if in this scene of con- 
fusion and contamination we strive for the life 
of the un defiled, if we attain to what we call 
our God, our ideal, our governing and consoling 
faith, we shall at length begin a return to our 
fathers' God. In that historic faith, in that high 
religious experience, in that supreme life of our 
race, we shall find ourselves at our best. We 
shall find there, deep in the holiest heart of our 
kindred, our kind, the sanctuary of our souls. 
We shall find there the infinite solace and peace. 

As we deepen in humanity, as our best sym- 
pathies grow and come to the command of our 
being, as we become greater and finer in the ser- 



196 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

vice of man, we shall inevitably, in one way 
or another, become sharers in the best life of our 
kind. As the burden of the good and pure heart 
grows heavier, it becomes as natural to believe 
in God as it was when we first spoke his name 
at our mother's side. When things are as they 
should be, we gravitate toward God as the fall- 
ing body gravitates toward the earth. His reality 
then comes upon us with an amazing sweetness 
and an overwhelming convincingness. Time, 
that takes away so much, may leave us with the 
sense of closer, surer, happier life in the dear 
life of God, our fathers' God, the God of our 
kindred and our kind, in whose strength we were 
born, in whose love we were nurtured, in whose 
being our minds were formed through the gra- 
cious humanities of home before we awoke to 
the problem and sorrow of the individual will. 
To come back to that faith, deep, vast, tender, 
sublime with the testimony of the supreme spirits 
of the race behind it, with the record of all the 
triumphant sons and daughters of sorrow set in 
its light, is a return which may be made by every 
man. Oh, that journey back to the Eternal 
Father, back to the Lord God of our fathers, 
back to the Heart out of which came the hearts 
of our fathers and mothers, back to the abo- 
riginal source of all love, all tenderness, and 
all hope ! What a return is that ! Our human- 



THE INHERITANCE OF FAITH 197 

ity at its best came from God, and when it is 
true to its deepest tendency, it returns to Him. 

Both of these tendencies of which I have 
spoken receive illustration and sanction from our 
Master's life. He was a child ; he lived in his 
mother's world. Then came his own vast world, 
of which he took possession by the spirit of his 
Father. On the cross he returned to the dear 
world into which he was born, his mother's 
world, and whispered from the centres of pain : 
" Woman, behold thy son; son, behold thy 
mother." Is it not profoundly moving and pro- 
foundly beautiful to see Jesus dying in the 
strength of the old home in Nazareth? Then 
there is the other return. Jesus was the flower 
of a great race, its consummate expression ; and 
another of the great utterances that fell from 
his dying lips was this : " Father, into thy hands 
I commend my spirit." These are words from 
one of the Psalms, repeated before him by many 
generations of the wise and brave of his race. 
Back to his mother's home and heart ; back 
to his mother's God, to the Lord God of his 
fathers, Jesus came ; and in the strength of an 
historic humanity transfigured in the life of 
God, no less than in the strength of his own 
spotless soid, he went as the sun goes when 
the day is done. 

I sometimes think that we do not know the 



198 THROUGH MAN TO GOB 

stuff of which we are made. Oh, the fires of love 
within, hidden and unsuspected, the slumber- 
ing music, the unawakened manhood! Oh, the 
unsounded depths of this rich, dear, and awful 
humanity that God has given us ! How cheap we 
hold our priceless possession ! How far we travel, 
seeking good, and forgetting the angel at our 
door, the Divine presence in our own being ! 
When this mysterious humanity stirs within 
us, let us wait upon it. This stir is our life and 
our hope. When the tide sets back to our fathers, 
let us go with it ; when, with deep, silent strength, 
it sets toward our fathers' God, let us begin upon 
it the great return. 



XI 
THE GRACE OF KINDNESS 

" And be ye kind one to another." 

EphesiaTis iv, 32. 

What is the highest human excellence? If 
you should put that question to a group of men 
and women, you would note in the replies that 
might be made a very great difference of opinion. 
Some would say one thing, some another. Put 
the question to a normal child, anywhere on the 
face of the earth, and there could be but one 
answer. Go back into the fair morning of your 
life, recall the time when the world was new, 
when everything came to you in the mystery 
of fresh experience, and ask the question, Who 
were they that interested and delighted you 
most in that golden age ? 

Personally, I have done that a hundred times. 
I have gone back into the morning of life, 
and looked again upon the men and women who 
then compassed me about. There were men and 
women saintly, truly so, and I regret to say that 
I did not like them. There were the supremely 
conscientious persons, whose worth and grandeur 
I can now see, and they impressed me then as 



200 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

among the gloomiest and most unattractive peo- 
ple in the world. They took the brightness out 
of the day, the zest out of life. There were the 
men of courage, and they were better. This fault, 
however, I found in them : a scorn of weakness, 
a careless contempt of children. Then came the 
patriots, the men who loved their country with 
a great love, and who filled my mind with inspir- 
ing tales of their country's power and majesty. 
I remember the passionate interest with which 
I listened to these tales, although I must con- 
fess that I had my doubts about the truth of 
some of these glorious traditions. But high 
above all the persons of that early period are the 
kind people. I can see them, at the far end of 
a long vista, with the light of God shining in 
their faces. There they remain in that silent 
world, images of beauty and humanity, wearing 
looks that then seemed, and that still seem, the 
best symbol of heaven, playmates, some of them 
forever vanished and yet unforgettable ; dear old 
mothers and grandmothers, who were fascinat- 
ing simply because of their unweariable kind- 
ness. The king of them all was an old soldier, 
who had fought through the Crimean war, and 
from whom, during the long, long days of the 
happiest of all the summers of my life, I never 
received anything but kind looks, kind words, 
and kind deeds. How this man could be so kind 



THE GRACE OF KINDNESS 201 

for so long a time lias always seemed to me an 
inscrutable m} r stery. The man whom a child, 
from sunrise to sunset, cannot torment into an 
unkind look or word or act is a great man. 
Such a man was the king- of the realm of my 
childhood. I have seen again and again the 
meadows in which he toiled, and in their lonely 
loveliness lives the beauty of his spirit ; I have 
wandered among the farm-buildings where he 
spent so much of his time, and the silent and 
vacant places still seemed to belong to him. I 
have stood by the river on whose banks he sowed 
and reaped, and the ceaseless rush of the waters 
over their stony bed seemed to be a kind of 
requiem for the repose of his soul. What is the 
highest human excellence? All the children in 
all the world answer, Kindness. Lift this answer 
and call it Christian kindness, and I believe it 
will stand as the final answer. 

In considering the Grace of Kindness we can, 
perhaps, best get at the heart of the matter by 
asking, and by trying to answer, certain questions. 

1. The first question is, What is kindness ? The 
word is one of the very greatest in our language. 
It has suffered a good deal from misuse. It has 
lost something of its strength and dignity from 
careless tongues. It is sometimes employed to 
denote the inoffensiveness of a useless person, 
the gush of a mere sentimentalist, the ready and 



202 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

happy assent of an individual whose desire is to 
sit still, or the emotional excess of perfect physi- 
cal health. There are persons whose physical ex- 
istence is so perfect, and whose pleasure in them- 
selves is so abundant, that the overflow of their 
emotions is sometimes mistaken for kindness. 

We must recover this great word to its natu- 
ral meaning. Kindness stands for the feeling of 
one for his race, and that feeling the highest ; 
it stands for one's interest in one's kind, and 
that interest the loftiest. Kindness implies in a 
man toward men an attitude of the intelligence, 
an attitude of the heart, an attitude of the will. 
The kind man holds in a considerate intelligence 
the lives of other men and their varying fortunes 
in this world. The kind man holds in a pure and 
sympathetic heart the rights and wrongs of other 
men under the burden and heat of the day, and 
their joys and sorrows. The kind man has a 
grave and humane purpose ; that is the attitude 
of his will toward his race. He is full of respect, 
full of honor, full of high consideration for his 
fellow men. The thoughts and feelings and pur- 
poses of the kind man have in them a sweet 
reasonableness, a healing grace, a high benignity. 
Kindness is the seed and the flower of all human 
excellence ; it is like the seed from which the 
magnolia-tree comes, and it is like the flower 
into which that tree lifts itself in the early days 



THE GRACE OF KINDNESS 203 

of June. It is the great, vital expression of all 
excellence, the deepest root of the noblest human- 
ity, and its consummate flower. 

We can all see that it implies fellow-feeling, 
racial sympathy, family love set free from family 
limits and encircling the world. And this pri- 
mary element of racial sympathy may be either 
natural or acquired. All men do not possess it 
naturally, in any large way. All may possess it. 
The man who wrote the Odyssey, for example, 
had a natural delight in human beings. Those 
gods and goddesses, so full of faults, are yet 
warm and rich, and often beautiful with human- 
ity. His women charm forever, — Nausicfia and 
Penelope. Read again the eleventh chapter of 
the Odyssey, and note once more this man's 
deep, pathetic, and mystic interest in man and 
man's world. Shakespeare's world is a world 
of human beings. Part of the witchery of his 
genius is in making us share something of his 
insight into man's world and his delight in it. 
The songs of Burns, — what are they but jets 
from the perennial fountain of his humanity ? 

There are many high souls to whom this inter- 
est in man is not native. Wordsworth says of 
Milton : " Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt 
apart." Milton was not naturally kind. Pie 
was austere, majestic, solitary, exceptional in his 
tastes and character. If he ever became kind, it 



204 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

was through achievement. And Wordsworth him- 
self was not naturally fond of human beings. He 
loved the hills, the meadows, the streams, and the 
rainbow that comes and goes ; he . preferred the 
great solitudes and the sweet and austere voices 
of nature to those of man. He came, indeed, to 
sing of the " still sad music of humanity," but this 
he did through discipline and achievement. And 
supreme in this class stands the author of the 
text, — Paul. He was naturally exclusive. He 
went for years in the proud consciousness that 
he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, of the tribe 
of Benjamin, a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He 
was proud, self-conscious, masterful, magnificent, 
as a Pharisee, but he was not kind. It was the 
vision of Jesus Christ that made this aristocratic 
soul one of the most democratic that ever lived. 
One can imagine the strangeness to him of his 
Lord's command, " Behold, I send thee far hence 
unto the Gentiles." "What? To the Gentiles ? 
Not to my own nation ? Not even to the Samari- 
tans ? " " No ; but to Greeks and Romans, Bar- 
barians and Scythians, bond and free ; I have 
chosen you to be the far-sighted and deep-hearted 
servant of the whole race." Paul was not dis- 
obedient unto the heavenly vision. And to-day 
he stands, as he will forever stand, an example 
of the racial sympathy that is the primary force 
in kindness. 



TIIE GRACE OF KINDNESS 205 

The second thing in kindness is the sense 
of the greatness and pathos of human life. The 
sense of the greatness of life comes first. Life is 
so great from every point of view, — its achieve- 
ment, loss, sin, capacity, hope, — that the poetry 
which prefers nature to man seems to me mere 
vaporing. Man's world is so intrinsically and 
tragically great that one finds it difficult to 
tolerate the writers who abandon humanity for 
nature. They are indeed seekers after strange 
gods, with a sad and wanton perversity in them. 
Take science. It is the one word for the vast- 
ness, the order, and the splendor of the physical 
universe. Certain persons cry out, How little is 
man in the presence of the universe unveiled by 
science ! Yes, and how great is the intelligence 
that has discovered that same universe ! The 
universe of science is first of all the shadow of 
man's greatness. Every extension of the bound- 
aries of science is a new witness to the magni- 
tude of man. 

There is literature. How great is literature, 
English, German, Italian, Greek, and, above all, 
Hebrew literature ! What a wondrous thing is 
the literature, the classic literature, of the world ! 
And in its final meaning, what is it but the wit- 
ness to the tragic and transcendent greatness of 
man ? When we appeal to the fine arts, do they 
not all sing the same song ? Poetry, music, paint- 



206 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

ing, sculpture, building, — can you call the race 
other than great that has articulated its thought 
and sentiment, its intelligence and passion, in 
forms so high and beautiful? 

There is, too, the world of industry. As an 
organization of the instinctive reason of man it 
is amazing. Kipling calls the ships that carry 
the commerce of the world the flying shuttles of 
the loom that is weaving into one many peoples. 
Vast wrongs, needless sufferings, are inflicted by 
man upon man in the world of trade ; yet trade 
is a civilizer. The great loom is forever active ; 
these flying shuttles are threaded with some- 
thing finer than greed, they are threaded with 
the sense of man's needfulness to man ; they are 
moving to and fro over the wide earth ; the fabric 
that is slowly issuing is the unity of the race, 
and the pattern in this fabric is the brotherhood 
of our kind. This Institute of trade that at spe- 
cial points is so inhuman, that over wide fields of 
activity appears so wanting in moral worth, that 
in general seems sometimes to be a scene of wild 
and endless contention, an embodiment of mad 
egoism, and yet of an egoism whose madness i? 
under severe restraint in order that it may the 
more completely plunder and desolate, is other 
and greater than we know. It is set in the moral 
order of the world ; it is set for the help of man. 
It is one vast expression of the instinctive reason 



THE GRACE OF KINDNESS 207 

of the race ; it is one of the most impressive wit- 
nesses to the greatness of mankind. Civilization 
as the sum of the material and spiritual acquisi- 
tions of man is a monumental witness to the dig- 
nity of human life. Survey this achievement, and 
you will, with the Hebrew Psalmist, assert the 
sovereign place of man in the universe ; survey 
it, and you will with him declare that God has 
made man only a little lower than himself. 

The kind man carries about with him the 
sense of the majesty of the race to which he be- 
longs. He is grateful that he was born a human 
being, happy to have been made a sharer in the 
ideals, the sympathies, the hopes of a great race, 
glad to think and love and serve as the inheritor 
of sublime achievements. 

There is, however, another side. There is the 
pathos of life. Burke's great words are an im- 
age of life : " What shadows we are, and what 
shadows we pursue ! " The greatness of man is 
in part the greatness of a tragedy. Agamemnon, 
Antigone, Hamlet, Lear, are poor in the pre- 
sence of the eonian misunderstanding, perver- 
sity, conflict, heartbreak, defeat, and death of 
humanity. These classic dramas are windows 
through which the student looks upon the tragic 
world ; the world itself is beyond, wide-reaching, 
wild, mysterious, terrible with woe. 

It is the function of tragedy to excite pity and 



208 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

thus to purify the heart. The kind man cannot 
look upon this vast scene of error and pain with- 
out pity. His heart is moved with compassion. 
He beholds the sorrow of the world ; it becomes 
his sorrow. It is this that makes him the pure 
and tender friend that he is. He lives near to 
the suffering souls of his fellow men ; he sees the 
wreck and the heartbreak in life ; he notes the 
swiftly passing beauty of it all, — 

"like the rainbow's lovely form 
Evanishing amid the storm," — 

and his compassionate heart elects to suffer 
with his kind and wait in benign pity upon its 
need. 

There is still another element in kindness that 
we must note, — service. This is the meaning 
of the Good Samaritan story. The Priest and 
the Levite may have had many virtues, although 
no record of this possession has come down to us, 
but there was one thing in which they were 
deficient, and that one thing was kindness. 
They refused help to a fellow man in distress. 
They refused it in the name of religion; they 
count for nothing, and they stand for those 
who count for nothing in the holy and humane 
service of man. Whatever his defects, the Good 
Samaritan had this one superlative excellence : 
he knew an unfortunate human being when he 
saw him, he knew, when he heard it, the divine 



THE GRACE OF KINDNESS 209 

call of humanity, he knew, when it confronted 
him, the supreme privilege of his life, and he 
took the bleeding victim of robbery and outrage, 
poured oil and wine into his wounds, set him on 
his own beast, carried him to an inn, took out 
two pence and gave them to the host, and closed 
the service of compassion with this fine charge 
and pledge : " Take care of him ; and whatso- 
ever thou spendest more, I, when I come back 
again, will repay thee." 

2. The second question has been somewhat an- 
ticipated in these last words : What is the spe- 
cial power of kindness ? We break new ground, 
however, in answering this question. The special 
power of kindness is that it abolishes a world of 
pain, and brings into the vacant place a world 
of joy. There is so much irremediable suffering 
in the world. There are so many bodily ills 
that cannot be cured or even alleviated, so many 
mental troubles that cannot be removed or even 
mitigated, so many sorrows that cannot be done 
away or even sweetened. That tragic world we 
wander in, helpless, or nearly helpless. That 
world of woe must be rolled back upon the 
heart of God. It is his problem, and we cannot 
doubt that He will meet it to the supreme satis- 
faction of every reasonable soul. That world of 
irremediable pain we leave with Him ; we await 
his dealing with it. 



210 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

There is a world of pain that need not be ; 
a world born of sour looks, ungracious speech, 
unmanly action, a world that harrows the hearts 
of millions. Kindness wipes that vast and dismal 
world out of existence. 

We read about fashionable society. We hear 
that in London, Paris, Berlin, and Boston there 
is such society. We hear that certain persons 
are anxious to get into this society, and if half 
that is said of its spirit is true, these persons 
might with more safety cherish a desire to get 
into a nest of hornets. Oh, the lies that people 
tell of one another ! Oh, the cruel falsehoods 
that they utter and scatter ! The power to sting, 
to inflict pain, to add to the burden and misery 
of life, is carefully cultivated, and the methods 
by which it works reduced to a fine art. 

What is the trouble with our family life? 
Unkindness. What is the bane of business life ? 
Unkindness. What is the central shame of our 
American social life ? Unkindness. Job had his 
Satan — accusing him, dogging his steps with 
suspicion and unbelief, smiting him first in his 
property, second in his family, and last in his 
health, snatching from him in the end his capa- 
city for resistance, taking as it were the rudder 
from the ship, after having destroyed her power 
of propulsion. This same Satan, in the form 
of unkindness, is still walking to and fro in the 



THE GRACE OF KINDNESS 211 

earth, unbelieving, cynical, frivolous, heartless, 
relentless, and armed with power to afflict and 
curse mankind. 

Kindness meets this vast and lurid world of 
needless pain, and annihilates it. Kindness de- 
stroys its sources. Kindness abolishes sour looks, 
malicious speech, wicked deeds ; and where these 
do not exist, that world of needless pain cannot 
come into being. When the sun is low, winter 
comes, and the earth is dead, and the streets are 
cold ; and while winter reigns, multitudes lead 
a shivering existence. When the sim is high, the 
world of winter vanishes ; the world of summer 
comes, with its song-birds, its blossoming trees, 
its opening flowers, its green earth, and its happy 
humanity. Kindness is like the sun. Its absence 
means a frost, a killing frost ; it means blight 
and gloom ; it means a world of pain that need 
not be imposed upon a world of pain that must 
be. It means day-labor, light denied, — the light 
of human sympathy and brotherhood. Every- 
thing that Midas touched became gold. Every- 
thing- that the kind man touches becomes bright 
with tender and shining humanity. Everywhere 
that the kind man goes he brings into being price- 
less things, — golden sympathies, radiant faces, 
glowing and grateful hearts. The kind man, the 
kind woman, is the magician for whom the world 
waits. 



212 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

3. Finally, how shall we increase this form of 
human excellence ? In many ways this can be 
done, but chiefly by living with the Lord Jesus 
Christ. He took twelve quarrelsome fishermen, 
subdued them to his own spirit, and sent them 
forth apostles of kindness. Jesus is himself the 
incarnation of kindness. Look at his human 
sympathy. When he appeared among men, the 
world was divided into Jews and Samaritans and 
Gentiles. The Jews were divided into Sadducees 
and Pharisees, publicans and sinners. Inside 
these divisions there were others still, bitter as 
death. Jesus overswept all these unhallowed 
limits. He took the whole world to his heart. 
Look at his delight in men. He loved men, — 
Levi the publican, Zaccheus the publican, Nico- 
demus the ruler, and Joseph of Arimathea, the 
family at Bethany, the weary race of sorrowing 
mothers and their sick sons and daughters, and 
the little children. You cannot think of the 
Teacher who took the children into his arms and 
blessed them as other than fond of the race of 
which he was the head. And did he not have a 
sense of the greatness and pathos of life ? What 
are his words for these aspects of our existence ? 
Sons of God ! There is the greatness of men. 
And Jesus has lifted Christendom into the sense 
of sonhood to God. That Christian conscious- 
ness of aboriginal and inalienable sonhood to 



TUE GRACE OF KINDNESS 213 

God has broken up and swept away a whole sys- 
tem of theology opposed to it, notwithstanding 
fifteen centuries of existence and influence. Sons 
of God by the native dignity of the soul ; that is 
Jesus' way of declaring his sense of the great- 
ness of man. And for the pathos of life hear his 
words : " Come unto me, all ye that labor and 
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." His 
life is the ideal of service. He went about doing 
good. He was the sunshine of the world. 

Think of this mind that held in such divine 
regard all orders and conditions of men, — little 
children, frail women, invalids, sinners, outcasts, 
all classes of human beings, just as the great sky 
holds in its serene heart the entire earth. We 
should be willing to rest the supremacy of Jesus 
upon the sovereignty of his concern for mankind. 
He had greater consideration for the world than 
any one else, a diviner sympathy, and his whole 
life was pitched upon the key of service. His 
ministry as the ideal expression of his mind and 
heart has won for him among all reasonable 
and aspiring spirits recognition as the leader 
and master of men. To live with Jesus Christ, 
to be subject to his soul ; that is the great assur- 
ance of kindness. And the more intimately and 
devoutly we live with him, the swifter and surer 
will be our growth in kindness. 

What is our religion ? It is the grace of 



214 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

the Lord Jesus Christ, who, though he was rich, 
yet for our sakes became poor, that we through 
his poverty might become rich. What is our 
religion ? It is the loving-kindness and tender 
mercy of God revealed to the world in the 
teaching, ministry, life, death, and resurrection 
of Jesus Christ. What is our religion? It is 
the loving-kindness of Jesus Christ as the assur- 
ance of the tender mercy of the Most High. 
We have a human God, one whose highest attri- 
bute is not justice, but kindness, not supreme 
regard for law, but supreme concern for man. 



XII 
THE GREAT QUESTION 

What is your life ? 

James iv, 14. 

A greater question than this no man can put 
to himself, no man can put to another. The 
question concerns the real and not the conven- 
tional man, therefore the conventional answers 
do not meet the case. Wealth, position, learning, 
power, fame, significant for the undiscerning, 
are superficial. The real man is in the depths, 
the infinite depths. We are inquiring now not 
for the pomp and circumstance of existence, but 
for its essential and veritable character. We 
wish to know not its dress, but itself, its inmost 
heart. 

The writer from whom the words of the text 
are taken gives one answer : " What is your 
life ? For ye are a vapor, that appeareth for a 
little while, and then vanisheth away." What 
he meant by this comparison we may perhaps 
discern in the feeling of another writer upon 
life. Dr. John Brown, in his inimitable " Rab 
and his Friends," describes with the fidelity of 
science and with the pathos of a Christian the 



216 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

death of the old carter's wife, Ailie. The old 
man is not sure whether his beloved wife is still 
with him. There is no pulse at the wrist. The 
beat of the heart cannot be heard. He takes 
a mirror and holds it before the parted lips of 
the dying woman. One small spot of dimness 
appears on it, and no more. The faithful mirror 
has caught the final breath. What is your life? 
It is a vapor that appeareth for a little while, 
and then vanisheth away. That is one answer, 
and all human history attests its great and 
pathetic truth. 

That is, however, only one answer among 
many. What is your life ? Just what you 
please to make it. It is your life, it is largely 
in your own hands. You can make it a thing 
of honor or of shame, a blessing or a curse, a 
fountain of joy or a burden of woe, a centre 
of light or a source of gloom. You are the 
master of your fate ; you are lord of yourself. 
You may become believer or unbeliever, theist, 
atheist, agnostic, Christian, Buddhist, material- 
ist. You may adopt any theory of existence 
that you please ; you may conform your exist- 
ence to whatever standard you like. You are 
free to make your life high or low, fine or 
coarse, full of love or full of brutality. You 
are free in this greatest of all the processes of 
experimentation; but you must abide by the 






THE GREAT QUESTION 217 

inevitable result. " Whatsoever a man soweth, 
that shall lie also reap." God is not mocked. 
Be not deceived. We must not think to sow to 
the flesh and to reap to the Spirit. Sowing and 
reaping are always in one and the same kind. 
The courses of conduct that gratify the beast in 
man will never issue in the power of the Spirit. 
Choose your standard ; act under it ; then face 
the inevitable. When all the restrictions upon 
freedom that go with heredity general and spe- 
cial, and environment universal and particular, 
are noted, it is still true that life is what we 
choose to make it. The loom is here, ready for 
our use ; the thread is here, awaiting our indus- 
try; the shuttle is here, too, in the inevitable 
impulsive soul ; but the pattern in the interest 
of which the loom runs, the shuttle flies, and the 
threads are woven, each man must supply. The 
character in the piece is from the weaver, and 
not from the machine. The controlling purpose 
is from the soul, and not from its circumstances ; 
and it is this purpose that gives character to life. 
In the presence of this freedom, at once pre- 
cious and perilous, I shall name four answers to 
our question. 

1. We take first the best possible answer. 
What is your life? It is an existence of moral 
worth, without flaw, clear, pure, shining, golden 
worth. We can imagine a man so good that he 



218 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

is able to make that reply. Evil thoughts come 
not near him. Base feelings find no room in his 
heart. Selfish designs and a self-seeking career 
are foreign to him. His thoughts are true, his feel- 
ings are reverent, his purposes are high, his con- 
duct is like the Lord's robe, without seam, con- 
sistent, whole, and wholly good. If one might 
borrow an image from the life of some planet, 
his life is not fire-mist, it is not solidity in heat 
and darkness. It is all light, all fire,' pure, burn- 
ing splendor, such an existence as Dante beheld 
in Paradise. It is goodness, goodness every- 
where, and nothing fyut goodness. Such a char- 
acter is at least conceivable. 

Is such a character only a dream ? We know 
well that few among the sons of men answer to 
this description. Looking over the Old Testa- 
ment, considering only the greater names of a 
great race, one might place here Moses, Nehe- 
miah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, among historical char- 
acters, and perhaps ideal persons like Joseph 
and Daniel. Perhaps one might place here the 
best of a great civilization, and again perhaps 
not. It may be that they belong elsewhere. 
Should the chief among the first disciples stand 
here ? It is difficult to say. Looking over the 
wide fields of history, one might consider suitable 
for this category Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and 
Buddha. We are sure that one should be placed 



THE GREAT QUESTION 219 

here, and we are completely sure of no other, — 
Jesus Christ. 

Even upon the most generous judgment, how 
few among the children of men can be classed as 
men of pure, clear, unalloyed worth! Let us be 
thankful for the few. They are the great moral 
reserve of our humanity, like the gold which is 
the reserve of our national currency. Think of 
the volume of business done in this land every 
day, every year, and how seldom you see a gold 
coin passing from hand to hand. Business is 
largely done in paper, in check or bill ; only now 
and then a gold eagle, a double eagle, appears. 
But in all this transaction through paper we 
know that the gold is in reserve, and that it 
holds solid and sure the financial system of the 
entire country. Few are the worthful among us, 
yet are we thankful for the few. They hold us 
to the sense of the strength and dignity which 
belong to the race, and to which we may come. 
We are thankful for Jesus Christ, who through- 
out Christendom lives in the vision of all men 
as the perfect human worth. What a boon it is 
to be able to think of him as the great reserve, 
the great backer, the great assurance, the golden 
basis of humanity's life, struggle, and hope ! 
" Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, 
both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into 
that within the veil." When the ship is caught 



220 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

offshore in storm and tempest, she takes the 
anchor that is part of herself and drops it into 
the wild deep beyond her. There it finds the 
rock, and there it holds her till the storm abates 
and the sea is calm. So we find Christ, the stay 
and assurance of man. We are caught in the 
gales of passion, doubt, meanness, brutality. 
We wonder if faith in the intrinsic nobility of 
man can live. We fling out of our own heart 
our confidence in the divine humanity of Jesus, 
and through the wild sea on which we are tossed 
that confidence sinks, anchor-like, till it finds 
him. Such is the worth to weak and sinful men 
of the flawless goodness of the Master of the 
Christian world. 

2. We come now to the answer that is second 
best. What is your life? An issue of useful 
work. This answer covers more. There are 
many men whose thoughts are not all true, 
whose feelings are not all noble, whose purposes 
and actions are not all high, who nevertheless 
are the great and good servants of their kind. 
You may deny Cromwell a place in the first 
class ; you cannot deny him a place in the sec- 
ond class. Think of that life, and its high utility 
to the political life of mankind ! You may deny 
Lincoln a place in the first order; you cannot 
deny him a place in the second. Again it is true 
that the soul of the man went forth in a great 



TIIE GREAT QUESTION 221 

service. Here Luther stands. He was a man 
of many imperfections, yet lias hu done the world 
an immeasurable service. 

Here we place our eleet citizens. The maker 
of a wholesome human home belongs here ; for 
that is a public, a racial utility. The man who 
carries on a great and honorable business be- 
longs here, for he is an immense utility to man- 
kind. Those who sow and those who reap, those 
who raise and those who gather the crops of 
the earth, those who direct the manufacturing 
energy of the country, those who run its carry- 
ing power by land and by sea, in a sense belong 
here. Their lives are indispensable to an ongoing- 
world ; and if you and I think it is good to live, 
good to have a living world, we shoidd be will- 
ing to confess that they who keep the world 
alive are at least useful. The beloved physician 
belongs here, the just jurist, the journalist who 
aims to create and to maintain a sound public 
opinion, the educator who brings to bear upon 
the successive generations of youth a strong and 
a benign manhood. 

When the farmer brings home from his 
orchard the fruits of the season, and looks care- 
fully over what he has gathered, he sees indeed 
only a few perfect apples ; but he sees a great 
many that are useful. And when you survey 
mankind, you find few indeed upon whom you 



222 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

can put without qualification the mark of worth, 
but you find many whom you can describe by 
the honorable term of usefulness. 

3. We must now listen to the third best answer. 
What is your life? It aims at the highest, it 
means well most of the time, it pursues, haltingly 
indeed, but with a sad sincerity, a lofty ideal. 
This, I think, covers more than either of the other 
two answers. Indeed, I am inclined to put in 
this class the majority of those whom we respect 
and love. 

I spoke of the apostles as belonging in the first 
order of men, perhaps. Surely they must be put, 
if anywhere below the first order, in the second. 
Yet the chief among .them placed himself in the 
third order. He thus describes his career, " not 
that I have already obtained, or am already made 
perfect : . . . but one thing I do, forgetting the 
things which are behind, and stretching forward 
to the things which are before, I press on toward 
the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God 
in Christ Jesus." Paul's greatness lies in the 
intention, movement, direction of his life, and 
not in its attainment. 

That makes one breathe more freely. If this 
hero of the faith belongs in the third order, the 
whole order is hallowed by him. What an order 
it is ! It is composed of the men who make no 
pretenses because they know that none are justi- 



THE GREAT QUESTION 223 

fiable ; of those who are seekers after truth, who 
move in a great quest, who have in their vision 
the ends that strengthen and console the race. To 
belong here is high honor, to move in the tides 
of humanity represented by the men of this order, 
faint yet pursuing, baffled but not defeated, set 
back but, like the stream behind the dam, gather- 
ing volume and force to go on again. How great 
and deep and full of God this is ! It is not the 
best ; it is not the second best ; but it is the third 
best, and it is admirable. 

The weather is not always good ; far from it. 
The sun never fails to rise, never fails to run 
his course, never fails to shine, always intends to 
fill the earth with light and beauty, but clouds 
gather round him and defeat him, storms beset 
him and turn to failure his best intention, his 
most glorious endeavor. There are thousands of 
men who mean to make their lives beautiful, who 
mean to make home beautiful, who mean to spread 
through the world sunshine and good cheer, but 
they are involved in bad weather. The light of 
their life is thrown back upon them, they are de- 
feated in their best intention and endeavor. The 
great steamers, I believe, always intend to cross 
the ocean in the shortest time possible. That is 
the ideal of good business ; but these great ships 
do not always succeed. They are overtaken by 
storm and tempest. They are held back by stress 



224 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

of weather, they plow forward, beaten by terrible 
seas and sorely pressed. Days late they come 
into port. But even in the wildest storm they 
head homeward, and they arrive at length. 

This is a picture of the great majority of the 
good people whom I know. They mean well 
most of the time, but they fail in doing well. 
They are caught in the storm, they are over- 
burdened with anxiety, they are blown back by 
the gales of passion and misfortune, and all that 
you can say of them is that they are headed 
homeward, that they mean well. Dr. Johnson 
says that hell is paved with good intentions ; 
which shows that Dr. Johnson could fail in in- 
sight. Good intentions are among the best things 
in life. The good intention is all the difference 
there is between a mistake and a crime ; it dif- 
ferentiates the mistaken person from the crimi- 
nal as far as the east is from the west. There 
are no good intentions in hell. All good inten- 
tions are the breath of the Infinite in man ; and 
they find their home at last in the house not 
made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For the 
best that we can sometimes say of the best men 
is that they intended well. 

4. We come now to the final answer. What 
is your life ? It is an indestructible capacity for 
worth, for usefulness, for the pursuit and service 
of the highest ideals. It is an indestructible 



THE (IRE AT QUESTION 225 

capacity for the divine life. That is the heart 
of our humanity. Below that no man can sink. 
He may be worthless, useless, unmoved by the 
ideal, but he can never be without the capacity 
for the highest. 

Here we see the power that sets man apart 
from the orders of life below him. Just as the eye 
is made to see, and in normal cases does see, the 
ear to hear, the palate to taste, the hand to touch, 
as the design of our Maker lies in the adjust- 
ment of organ to function, so the capacity of the 
soul for a life of worth, utility, high intention, 
shows the plan and presence of God in the 
soul. This enduring capacity for the highest is 
what the Bible calls the image of God in man. 
He is fitted, and he alone is fitted, to share the 
Universal life. Some creatures have feet only, 
others have feet and wings. Man has the men- 
tal powers of the inferior orders of life, and he 
has that which they do not have, the capacity to 
rise into the life of God. The Greek Hermes 
had winged feet ; the human soul has this swift, 
soaring distinction. 

Here we learn the true ground of self-respect. 
The sense of self-respect is indispensable to man- 
hood. Without self-respect no man is strong, no 
man is brave. Without it honor is impossible. 
There is hardly a noble quality of human charac- 
ter that is not rooted in self-respect. How men 



226 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

struggle to maintain this precious feeling! To 
what devices, to what delusions, they resort to 
keep or to recover self-respect ! They tell us 
that they are high-born, that they know so much, 
that they have been so very successful, that their 
friends are so distinguished. All the while they 
are aware that these things do not count. Your 
character is thin ice ; it will not support your 
heavy pretensions. Retreat to the firm-set earth. 
You can respect your nature when you cannot 
respect your character. Stand on your human 
nature as God made it, stand on your capacity 
for goodness, stand on your capacity to utter in 
your life the moral life of God, and you shall 
look the whole world in the face. 

Here, too, we learn the ground of hope for our 
kind. If only men of worth go to heaven, it will 
be a lonely and forlorn place. If only lives that 
are signally useful go there, it will still be a 
sparsely populated and a weary land. If only 
they go to heaven who pursue consciously a high 
moral ideal, even on this ground the majority 
of our fellow men will be excluded from that 
sphere of radiant rest. This I cannot accept. 
As this old planet at midnight and in the dark- 
est night of the year, when the city is asleep, 
when whole nations are asleep, still moves 
silently and resistlessly sunward, so the great 
world of toil, borne on by the Holy Ghost, 



THE GREAT QUESTION 227 

carries toward the eternal light all true workmen 
everywhere, even if they never look up, and 
think of God hardly once a week. 

Do you think that is too broad? What are you 
going to do with these multitudes unconscious 
of the Christian ideal? Here are the millions 
who are doing the hard work of the world. They 
tumble out of the cradle into the workshops of 
the world ; they tumble out of the workshops 
of the world into the grave ; and their life from 
beginning to end is in the service of their kind. 
And is there no God living within them because 
of their work, as the lightning lives in the 
cloud ? Where men gain the worth of which 
they are seldom conscious is not in church or 
Sunday-school, precious as these servants of the 
Spirit are, but in the stern process whereby they 
help their fellow men to live. An idle world 
would be a hopeless world. A toiling and suffer- 
ing race has the worth of God in it, however 
dumb about the divine it may be. A serving 
and suffering race, even a race that serves and 
suffers under compulsion, is great with hope, 
because it is, although it know it not, the suffer- 
ing servant of God. 

I am not pleading for contentment with the 
lower forms of man's life. I am showing the 
ground of hope in the kingdom of God. Did 
you ever find the nest of a skylark ? It builds 



228 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

its nest in the field, in any tuft of grass that 
it may find. You look into that nest, and you 
discover there, at first, three or four tiny eggs, 
with the potentiality of a skylark in each one. 
Survey the human race, and what is your first 
discovery? The great, sweet capacity of man- 
hood brooded by the sable wings of the world's 
work, with the Holy Ghost in the wings. You 
look into that nest a second time, and you see 
three or four mouths wide open. There are in 
the nest now only mouths. You consider again 
the masses of mankind, and you note hunger 
everywhere, greed, clamoring appetite. Human- 
ity has become one vast, ravenous mouth. You 
look into the nest a third time. It is empty. 
The young birds are hopping on the ground, they 
are on the fences, they are exercising their 
wings in short flights. They are a utility to 
themselves and to the parent birds. Consider 
men again, and this time you find them work- 
ing, thinking of others ; the father is living for 
his wife and children, the wife and mother is 
living for her home, the children are working, 
too, and they are full of sympathy for their 
parents and for one another. Usefulness is 
changing into something fine and high the clam- 
orous selfishness of the mere animal. You look 
once more at your birds, and you see them on 
the wing. They are rising in the morning 



THE GREAT QUESTION 229 

against the purpling east, pouring forth their 
song to the dawn, beautiful as the dawn itself, 
or, as in Shelley's living words, they are greet- 
ing the sunset : — 

" Iu the golden lightning 

Of the sunken sun, 
O'er which clouds are bright'ning, 

Thou dost float and run, 
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun." 

That is the bird at its best ; that is man at his 
highest. Here is man's life, — capacity, inten- 
tion, utility, worth, flight, song, joy, and God 
over all, under all, and in all blessed forever. 

What is your life, O my brother? It is 
capacity for the highest. Rest not there. Make 
it pursuit of the flying ideal ; make it a noble 
utility ; make it worth, song, freedom, joy ; 
make it the conscious, winged, happy, singing 
life in God. 



XIII 
THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY 

Luke ii, 8-12. 

In this account of the birth of Jesus we have 
the romance and the reality, the poetry and the 
truth, the pageant of faith and the awful beauty 
of the Divine Child. The angel that appeared 
to the shepherds inspired fear, hope, obedience, 
and discovery. In the presence of the angel the 
shepherds were overcome with awe ; they were 
lifted with a vast hope ; at once they were obe- 
dient to the heavenly vision ; and this obedience 
led them to the great discovery. In awe and 
hope and obedience they came with haste, and 
found both Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying 
in the manger. We may share the same feelings, 
we may enter the same experiences, inspired not 
by the angel, but by the Divine Child. 

1. The true object of awe is not the angel and 
his heavenly host, but this Divine Child. Think 
what he has done to lead men to God ! Think 
how he has made the world know that God cares 
for it ! Suppose that Jesus had wielded an equal 
power in leading men away from God ! Two 
possibilities lie in the soul of that wondrous 



THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY 231 

Child, the possibilities of racial salvation and ra- 
cial perdition. Look into the manger, and behold 
there the awful power of a possible Saviour and 
a possible destroyer. 

The solemn hope of life lies in its permanent 
interests. Men were made to live with one an- 
other according to justice, in the mood of kind- 
ness, and in devout communion with the Eternal 
life. Within the compass of justice and kind- 
ness and religious trust are very many great 
human interests. We have interests physical, 
intellectual, political, artistic. Our great inter- 
ests are largely in the keeping of great men. 
They may lead us wisely, and again they may 
lead us astray. They may mould our intelligence 
in the forms of a false philosophy, crush our 
humanity by a false science, corrupt our sense of 
beauty by pressing upon us unworthy standards, 
enslave us by their political control, degrade 
us by their atheism and despair. Great men make 
the world ; great men mar it. Fall under the in- 
fluence of one sort of greatness, and your whole 
nature rises into strength ; fall under the power 
of another kind of greatness, and your life is 
ruined. Here we see our debt to the noble great. 
A few great thinkers in Greece, in France, in 
Germany, in Great Britain, and one or two in 
America save the intellectual life of the race. A 
few sane scientists become the pledge of perma- 



232 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

nent sanity in the interpretation of nature. A few 
poets, a few painters and builders, a few musi- 
cians, become sovereign over the artistic life of 
the world. A few great rulers lift the nations into 
political manhood and hope. What Moses, Peri- 
cles, Caesar, Charlemagne, Cromwell, and Wash- 
ington have done for the political well-being of 
the world it would be difficult to measure. And 
here is the tremendous thought : all who have 
served wisely might have served unwisely, all who 
have lifted human life might have dragged it down. 
Suppose that Jesus had used his power in 
leading men away from God! Think of that 
mind ! Imagine it to have framed a religion of 
despair, what compass and grandeur and wild 
fascination he could have given to it ! To what 
empire over the thought and feeling of the race 
he could have lifted it ! All the teachers of 
pessimism, Ecclesiastes, Lucretius, Omar, Swift, 
Schopenhauer, Thomson, would seem but vagrant 
clouds against the noonday sun, compared with 
the eternal night which his mind and sympathy 
might have made the home of mankind. Even 
Buddha would seem a small calamity compared 
with this, for Jesus possessed such creative power 
in the world of thought, and such genius for in- 
vesting his creations with fascination, that had 
he been himself misled, he would have misled 
mankind. 



THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY 233 

We begin to see with what awe we should 
stand at the manger in Bethlehem. The possibil- 
ity of the world's salvation or perdition is here. 
The great order of thought that tells us that 
the Eternal God is the Father of men, that his 
mercy surrounds every soul, that He has in each 
human being a purpose of infinite love, that the 
dark side of existence is but discipline in the in- 
terest of personal righteousness, inward wealth, 
and final joy, that almighty wisdom and good- 
ness rule over all, may rise out of that Child's 
mind to illumine, to guide, and to console the 
world ; or some scheme of inconceivable power 
and gloom may come forth from that same mind 
to cover the race with the horror of great dark- 
ness. At this manger we stand in awe. Here is 
the most fateful thing in history, the undeclared 
mind of the Child Jesus. 

The leaders of the race were once children. 
Standing at the benign issue of their finished 
careers, how great they seem as they lie in the 
cradle, and how fateful ! Washington and Arnold 
were once children, Lincoln and Davis, John 
and Judas. Paul was once a child, and Paul's 
nameless schoolmate whose life became a plague. 
Augustine was a child, and here is that forgotten 
friend of his whose power was spent in degrading 
his kind. Luther was once a child, and that other 
monk, who hated the light and served darkness. 



234 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

Cromwell was once a child, and Charles I. The 
saints were once children, and the same is true 
of all the criminals and vagabonds in history. 

In this mood of seriousness we look upon the 
children of to-day. They are not mere play- 
things. They are not simply for the entertain- 
ment and comfort of kindred. They are charged 
with terrible power. They may raise the nation 
into new greatness, and they may pull down and 
destroy the work of our hands. They may honor 
and advance the Kingdom of God, and they may 
bring on the reign of darkness. In our children 
we discern these two tremendous possibilities : 
they may become saviours of men, or destroyers. 

2. The inspiration to hope is not in the angel 
and his heavenly host, but again it is in this 
Divine Child. In that young life carefully edu- 
cated, piously trained, completely possessed by 
the spirit of God, is the beginning of a new day 
for mankind. There is the beginning of the 
mightiest human life in history. There is the 
true ground for hope. The angelic host may be 
but a vision ; Jesus is real. The vision may fade 
or even become incredible ; the reality of Jesus 
is an abiding and mighty reality. Look at him 
in the manger. There is Divine humanity, with 
worlds of strength, tenderness, beauty, insight, 
love, authority, awaiting revelation. Look at 
him, and see in that Divine soul the sure pro- 



THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY 235 

phecy of the new heaven and the new earth 
wherein dwclleth righteousness. Old Simeon 
might well sing as he took this Child in his arms : 

" Now lettest thou thy servant depart, O Lord, 

According to thy word, in peace ; 

For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, 

Which thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples; 

A light for revelation to the Gentiles, 

And the glory of thy people Israel." 

Old Simeon said nothing about the vision of 
angels. The salvation for which he waited was 
a human salvation. He was sure of that salva- 
tion when he held in his aged arms that glorious 
Child. 

This Simeon story is the rendering of the de- 
vout heart of one generation ; it is the rendering 
of the devout heart of all the generations. All the 
wise and devout in Judea, when Jesus was born, 
felt as Simeon did ; all the wise and devout in 
all the generations have felt in this way as they 
stood in the Temple and saw this Child in the 
arms of the aged servant of God. It is a beauti- 
ful sight that we have here. A man old, infirm, 
awaiting the end, who has spent his strength in 
the service of his people, who sees the immense 
and infinite need of his nation, who longs to 
die not without some vision of the coming salva- 
tion, stands one fair morning at the Temple-door. 
Up from Bethlehem sleeping there on the hill- 



236 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

side a few miles south of Jerusalem come Joseph 
and Mary, bringing with them the Infant Jesus. 
There is something in that Infant that speaks to 
the old man. He sees a goodly, a Divine Child. 
The power to work the salvation for which the 
old saint has been waiting is in the soul of 
that Child. The coming from God of this life 
is the sure pledge of the great deliverance. 
Simeon is done, but here is the beginning with- 
out end. 

We must not think that Simeon knew or even 
dreamed what theology would say about Jesus. 
He simply saw before him an infant, an infant 
with the light of heaven in his face, with the 
presence of God in his soul. He saw a Divine 
soul, and knew that God had come anew into 
the world. Simeon felt about this Child as good 
people always feel in the presence of a rarely 
beautiful infant life. The saints always rejoice 
when a man is born into the world. The greatest 
thing in the world is the birth of a child, coming 
from God in the strength of unsearchable possi- 
bilities of service. The saints have learned the 
ways of God in bringing into human society 
more and more of his light and love and author- 
ity. They know that the cradles of the race are 
the east, where the new and divine day is break- 
ing. They look thither and behold the increas- 
ing glow, the spreading fire, the great silent 



THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY 237 

oncoming day of the Lord. They know that 
souls bring to souls the sense and assurance of 
the soul of God, that new souls bring the new 
sense and the profounder assurance, that the 
great souls just born are glorious in prophecy 
for the race to which they have come. 

You can imagine Israel in bondage, groaning 
under burdens too heavy to be borne, appeal- 
ing blindly to Heaven, expecting God to rend 
the heavens and come down. The wild multitude 
would think nothing of the little boy that was 
born to Amram, would smile at the ark of bul- 
rushes floating there in the river, would discover 
there nothing but pathos and the tragic love of a 
mother's heart in the desperate effort to save the 
child's life from the horrible decree of Pharaoh. 
Yet there may have been some pure prophetic 
soul, some one old in years and in suffering, 
and old in the knowledge of God's way of help- 
ing man, who beheld in the infant in the ark 
of bulrushes floating in the Nile the hope of a 
coming deliverer. In all the ages of distress, can 
we not believe that the wise and the pure waited 
for the coming of God in the coming of children ? 
You can think of them, turning away in sorrow 
from the poor philosopher, the miserable priest, 
the still more miserable demagogue, turning away 
sad at heart from all the old and helpless leaders 
of the time, and going forth on a pilgrimage to 



238 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

the cradles of tlieir race. Look at them as they 
visit home after home ; look at them as the lines 
of care and distress vanish from their faces, as 
the light of dead hopes begins to shine again in 
their old eyes, as they go away at last with the 
sure vision of God's fresh advent in the advent 
of new human souls. 

The tabernacle of God is with men. Ye are 
the Temple of God. That is Christianity. Men 
come from God, and they bring God with them. 
Jesus is our Lord because he once for all set 
God's method of revealing himself in ideal, in 
perfect light, the ideal and perfect light of his 
Divine humanity. Henceforth we look for God 
in human lives, in the intellect of the wise man, 
in the heart of the good man, in the conscience of 
the pure, in the will of the strong. Here in the 
succession of good lives dating from the Divine 
life of Jesus is the river of God, and it is full of 
water. What the Nile is to Egypt the religious 
soul of man is to man. The great river created 
the country, it keeps it alive, it makes it fruitful 
and beautiful. On either side is desert, wild, 
wide, terrible. Whithersoever the river goes 
everything lives. The Nile is a kind of deity to 
that land, a thing so solemn, constant, supreme, 
that it might be worshiped. Such is the career 
of man in this world. On either hand are the 
immensities of space and time, to right and left 



THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY 239 

are the material orders of the cosmos, a bound- 
less desert so far as any hint of love is concerned, 
an infinite waste wherein is found no sign of con- 
science, no single flower of regard or pity for 
man. Through this wild wilderness, in which 
live fearful things, there runs forever the great 
stream of our human life. Here is the river that 
makes our world and all worlds live. Here is 
the force that creates, that sustains, that forever 
guards the higher faith of man. Here is the 
power that is sovereign in this whole sphere in 
which we live, that brings God from beyond the 
stars, from behind the cosmos, from the un- 
searchable depth of eternity, and reveals Him 
as the life of our life, the love of our love, the 
soul of our soul. Greater than all the wonders 
of Egypt is the solemn, silent, sovereign river; 
greater than all the wonders of time and space 
is the succession of wise and good men. God is 
there, the living God, the God and Father of 
Jesus Christ, our fathers' God. 

The picturesque forms of faith may fade. 
Many things in the early faith of the Christian cen- 
turies may lose their power as the ages come and 
go. A whole world dear to us, dear to other gen- 
erations, may pass utterly away ; but one thing 
is sure. God in Christ is here forever. God in 
the lives of Christian men and women shall never 
pass. God in the successive generations of chil- 



240 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

dren is the abiding God. Here in the Incarnation 
of God in Jesus, and in his disciples, is the per- 
petual, unassailable gospel, the Christianity that 
forever lives, forever vindicates its reality, that 
can never die. The heavenly host may be but 
a dream; Jesus we know is real, and God is 
with him. 

3. Here is our inspiration to obedience. Look 
at the power of Jesus over his mother. Her 
best education was in loving and in training him. 
Think of the new interest in life which he gave 
to all, and the new sense of power. Over the 
shepherds and the wise men, over all the good 
people in the little town where he was born, over 
the two Temple saints, and later over the doc- 
tors, he wielded the same charm. He imparted 
to his mother, he imparted to all, fresh interest 
in living and a profounder sense of being and 
power. The education of Jesus was largely the 
work of his mother ; the mother's education was 
in the vision she obtained of the soul of her 
son, in her ever-deepening love and in her ever- 
devoted service. 

So it is to-day. What is the greatest of all eco- 
nomic motives ? The hope of wealth ? No, for of 
that there is no hope for thousands. The desire 
for bread ? No, for many come to think so little 
of life that bread as the means of living loses its 
incentive. Happiness ? No, for great as the quiet 



THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY 241 

content is that comes from honest work honestly 
done, we cannot forget the drudgery that much 
of the work of the world is, or the suffering 
that is inseparable from it. Companionship ? No ; 
for much as man depends upon man, and consid- 
erable as is the comfort of the companionship in 
work of like-minded men, yet we must not over- 
look the inhumanity of workman to workman. 
None of these motives, nor all of them together, 
could keep this old and sorrowful world of sow- 
ing and reaping, buying and selling, producing 
and transporting, alive for a year. If you would 
know the power behind the plows and reapers, 
the looms and stores of the world ; if you would 
know the sufficient inspiration of miner and 
sailor, the man who lives in the heart of the 
earth and the man who spends his strength in 
the heart of storms and tempests, you must look 
into the homes, into the cradles of the race. Men 
work that they may get bread and shelter and 
education and comfort for the children. The 
power of the child over the father, over the 
mother, — there is the great, persistent inspira- 
tion of the world of work. Men and women will 
dare anything, will do anything, will endure 
anything, that the children whom they love may 
live. It is love, love of the amazing child, that is 
the mainspring of the world's best activity. In 
that love is coiled the power that keeps the old 



242 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

world running, that will keep it running better 
and better, and running forever. 

If this is true, we owe our character largely to 
our children. Three fourths of good character are 
born of honest work, and honest work is sustained 
by our love for our children ; therefore to our chil- 
dren we are indebted for the best part of our life. 

We may work for our own children ; we may 
work for the children of others. So far we are free 
to choose. Beyond this there is no choice, if we 
would attain to our highest estate. Our highest 
nature will never awake from slumber, will never 
rise into power and joy, till the voice of the child 
rings in our ear. Then our work will have among 
its motives human love, and work into which 
human love enters becomes a school, a church, a 
sanctuary of the Most High. 

We hear about the new education for the child. 
It is good to hear about it. But let us under- 
stand that it is not for the child alone. It is also 
for the parent, for the brother and sister and 
friend ; it is for the entire generation of adult 
life. The capacity to love and serve children 
comes near being man's highest capacity. At all 
events, it is the capacity to gain character from 
the family life of the world, the capacity to win 
for one's self the supreme education, — the vision 
of worth, the passion of love, the title of servant. 

It was no fanciful picture that Isaiah drew 



THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY 243 

when he said, " The wolf shall dwell with the 
Iamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the 
kid ; and the calf and the young lion and the 
fading together ; and a little child shall lead 
them." The brutal world is still in the control 
of the cradles of the world. The wild forces in 
man's soul answer to the gentle voices of the 
children. The fierce passions of men, passions 
for pleasure, idleness, show, vanity, sensuality, 
and numberless shameless things are subdued 
into working energies, converted into capacities 
for a fellowship of service and reasonable living, 
by the divine charm of childhood. In the vision 
and love and service of childhood the wild beasts 
within us are tamed ; we become men. We have 
given to the children our life; we have received 
it back with God in it. 

4. Finally, the Divine Child is our great in- 
centive to discovery. The nature of Jesus is the 
inexplorable and rewarding mystery. Jesus is 
continually saying that he is the path to God. 
lie is the way, no less than the truth and the 
life. He is this in a unique manner, and at the 
same time he is this in a representative manner. 
One of the greatest achievements of Jesus is the 
sense which he created in men of the unfathom- 
able meaning of human nature. His vision of 
men as sons of God was a vision of beings with 
the divinest endowment, and capable of put- 



244 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

ting forth the very greatest powers. Jesus saw 
in men indestructible affinities to the Eternal, 
indissoluble bonds of brotherhood, plans of God 
lying deep in the soul for an existence, personal 
and social, of the greatest range and worth, and 
endless capacities for all noble growth, all ex- 
alted achievement, all serious fellowship, all high 
delight. Jesus was himself the supreme wonder 
of the world ; he was this as the Divine Man. And 
the greatest thing on the earth for Jesus was not 
nature, but humanity, not things, but souls, not 
systems of opinion or religion, but man. To man 
Jesus devoted his whole strength. For Jesus man 
was the sovereign fact in creation, the key to the 
character of God. And one thing he has done 
of immeasurable moment. He has stimulated 
among all peoples the sense of humanity, inspired 
man to the study of man, set the human soul 
in the centre of all high interests, and built the 
intellectual world round this centre. Jesus sur- 
veyed our world, considered the fruitfulness of 
its various parts in relation to the Infinite, looked 
into many of the barren excavations, the vain 
searchings of men, held within the compass of 
his vision the whole field of possibility, put his 
hand upon the human soul, personal and social, 
and said, " Mine here. Here is the inexhaust- 
ible vein. The wealth of the world, the riches of 
the universe, are to be approached and gained 



THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY 245 

from this point. God conies to men in me, God 
comes to men in man." 

Our generation is earnest over this teaching of 
Jesus. \V r c hold the child in higher value. We 
believe that wonders await us in the study of the 
soul of the child. We believe that there are 
depths and heights of wisdom in the unconscious 
spirit of a normal child that bring God anew 
into the world ; we look to this psychic wonder 
and behold a mystery of personality only barely 
conscious of itself, yet moving forces and show- 
ing implications of itself over immeasurable fields, 
developing surprises, revealing capacities, that 
amaze the student, and that call upon him for 
profounder search and devotion. Here in the 
children are our future prophets, teachers, schol- 
ars, statesmen, citizens, and masters of trade, 
lovers, husbands, wives, makers and moulders of 
the nation. As they are, it will be. As they may 
be, it may become. The possibilities of the child 
are the possibilities of the nation, the possibilities 
of the world. Every spring the farmer goes forth 
upon a new venture ; every new seedtime is the 
promise of a yet better harvest. In every new 
generation of children there is a chance for a new 
and better nation. In every new generation of 
children there may be the assurance of a nobler 
country. Here is the seed-time of citizenship ; 
here is the assurance of a mightier harvest. Men 



246 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

of economic habits are grieved as they see in 
Niagara so much power running to waste. Their 
grief is a sordid grief. The aesthetic wonder more 
than compensates for the economic loss. Let 
grief be turned in wise directions. Let us grieve 
that the fresh accession of Divine power sent to 
society in each new generation of children is 
allowed so largely to run to waste, that only a 
fraction of the innate nobility of children is ever 
saved to the world, that the vast volume of its 
love, honor, fellow-feeling, moral insight, and 
might has never yet been put to the service of 
man. That is the wild cataract whose thunder 
may well awaken grief and despair ; that is the 
rolling and tremendous flood whose perpetual 
waste may well be the supreme sorrow of mankind. 
We come back to this conclusion. The people 
who revere childhood, who enter into the vision 
of its hidden wealth of capacity and possibility, 
who secure that wealth by wise training, who 
thus improve their own stock from generation 
to generation, providing with the lapse of 
the centuries nobler lovers, better husbands, and 
deeper-hearted mothers, will surely aid in the 
achievement of two things. They will provide 
the better race to command the future, they will 
build the nation upon the better-understood and 
better-served childhood : they aid in securing 
an ascending national life. 



THE ROMANCE AND THE REALITY 247 

This is one of the two things, and the other is 
the greater faith. The best man brings us near- 
est to God. The sovereign man carries the world 
into the very presence of God. This is the work 
of Jesus. He was able to take the world with 
him into the consciousness of God. And when 
he left the world, he left his diseiples in it to 
continue his work. He works for the coming of 
the better child, the ideal child, the race lifted 
into truth and goodness. He waits for a social 
whole so wise, so clean, so devout, so sure of 
God itself, that it will like a mighty tide take 
up souls everywhere and carry them to God. 

We do not look to the angels for new light. 
We look to the cradles of the land. We w r atch 
by the young life of the race for the consolation 
of the race. In the freshness of its endowment, 
in the conservation of its grace through the 
wiser training, in the steady unfolding of its 
divine humanity, in the rhythm and song of its 
devout and exalted life, we hear the notes of a 
new Gloria in Excelsis. 



XIV 
WISE MEN AND THEIR IDEALS 

"For we saw his star in the east, and are come to worship him." 

Matthew ii, 2. 

There are many questions concerning this star 
that we cannot answer. Was it a veritable 
outward illumination, or only an inner guiding 
light? Did it belong to those great bodies that 
travel and shine in space, or to those ideal splen- 
dors that give distinction to all wise and serious 
human life ? Is this story about the star the his- 
tory of some miraculous heavenly appearance, or 
is it poetry, a beautiful parable of something 
great in certain human souls? These are ques- 
tions about which we may have opinions, but 
which we cannot answer. We were not there 
to share the vision, and therefore we cannot 
tell what it was that the wise men saw. 

Some things, however, are clear. The star was 
the star of wise men. It was seen in the East, 
that is, it appeared in the firmament under which 
these men lived, it moved in their environment, 
it looked down upon them in their places of toil 
and suffering. It was a guiding star ; it con- 
nected the East with a better West, it led them 
on from one form of wisdom to a higher, it brought 



WISE MEN AND THEIR IDEALS 249 

them at length to the birthplace of the Highest. 
And in all these respects this star is of permanent 
moment for mankind; it is of clear and shining 
significance for ns to-day. 

Wise men cannot live without beholding great, 
moving, guiding lights. The anthem oftenest 
upon the lips of the wise is, " To him that made 
great lights ; for his mercy endureth forever." 
The wise man is always a star-beholder, a star-fol- 
lower. He lives by the splendor of ideals. These 
fill his inner sky with their bright order and their 
solemn beauty. They appear to each wise man in 
the region where he dwells. They look down upon 
him in his toil, and love, and suffering, and prayer. 
They transfigure the night of his animalism and 
raise within his spirit new dreams of the dignity 
of his nature. They expand his narrow world ; 
they give him the sense of the Infinite and Eter- 
nal. They connect his partial and fleeting exist- 
ence with something great and enduring ; they 
call him onward to the fulfillment of his deepest 
longings ; they bring him step by step to the su- 
preme manifestation of God. When we are wise, 
we see and follow shining ideals ; when we see and 
follow shining ideals, we come at last, after long 
journeys, it may be, and much weariness, to the 
vision of Christ. For Christ is the great answer 
to the ideal longings of man ; he is, in the pro- 
foundest sense, the desire of all nations. 



250 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

1. There is the ideal thought of the world. 
How wise men have striven for the deepest and 
the most satisfying insight into this mysterious 
existence, into this mysterious universe ! Let the 
search be properly conditioned, let it be wise, let 
it be for a thought that best accounts for what 
is of most concern in man's world. Such a man 
was Augustine, who went the round of all the 
teachers of the day, who longed for a wise and 
true thought about this strange life of ours, and 
who, when he came to the New Testament, found 
himself at home. Take all the philosophers of 
the spirit in our Christian era who have known 
anything about Christianity. They started far 
enough away, many of them, from Christ's in- 
terpretation of existence ; they toiled, suffered, 
grew ; they came, the permanent names among 
them, to see in the great thoughts of Jesus the 
profoundest insight into life. It is impressive in 
the highest degree to find Fichte teaching the 
way toward the blessed lif e in the terms of Chris- 
tian thought, and to watch John Stuart Mill in 
his old age standing in admiration before the sub- 
lime genius of Jesus Christ. The thought that 
presents the Eternal as our Father in Heaven, 
that makes of our human race one family, that 
looks upon the universe as our Father's house, 
that regards the earthly sojourn of man as life in 
one room of that house, and man's career in the 



WISE MEN AND THEIR IDEALS 251 

unseen as life in another room of the same dwell- 
ing, is for the spiritual intellect the ideal of all 
wise thought. 

We do not know that it is true. It may seem 
too good to be true. We are unable to prove 
that it is true. But hither we come in our quest 
for the best, here we rest in our wanderings, here 
by the sublime teaching of Jesus we wait. It is so 
wise and so worthy. It meets the demands of a 
reasonable mind, and it holds for the intelligence 
a reasonable universe. We can see our fathers 
and the great company whom they represent 
standing here. They were led hither by their 
parents and teachers and the custom of their 
times. They were led by something greater. 
They were led by the desire for an adequately 
wise thought, and they were led through the 
stern discipline of life. Famous men leave to 
posterity many portraits. The generations exam- 
ine these one by one, and finally gather about 
the best. This they hold is the most speaking 
likeness of the famous spirit now in the unseen. 
So men examine and select among the likenesses 
of Luther, Cromwell, Milton, and Lincoln. They 
examine, select, and wait upon the best. So we 
deal with man's thoughts about the universe. 
They are portraits made by an immemorial suc- 
cession of artists differing greatly in insight 
and power. Wise men examine these portraits 



252 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

because of their profound desire to know the 
character of the world in which they live. They 
examine, select, and finally gather in fixed admi- 
ration and faith about the best. The thought of 
Jesus is the great portrayal of the character of 
the universe. This, we believe, is the true like- 
ness of the Eternal. Hither we have been led by 
our desire for the wisest human thought of exist- 
ence. Here by this sublime image of existence 
we will wait till the day break and the shadows 
flee away. 

2. There is the ideal beauty in the world. It 
sometimes seems to us strange that the incom- 
parable painting genius of early modern Europe 
should have been so engrossed with sacred sub- 
jects. We explain it by saying that the world was 
then under the domination of Catholic Chris- 
tianity, and that artists sought their subjects 
in what lay close to the popular heart. That is 
one explanation, and there is perhaps some truth 
in it. 

There is, however, a deeper explanation. The 
lover of beauty, if wise, must go on to the high- 
est. Take a soul like Raphael or Michelangelo. 
Consider the passion for beauty in that spirit. 
Where can it rest but in the vision of the beauty 
of the Lord our God? There is no beauty in 
Greece that can satisfy the vision that appears 
in the Sistine Madonna. There is no beauty 



WISE MEN AND THEIR IDEALS 253 

anywhere save in the life of Christ that can 
meet the soul of Michelangelo. When Da Vinci 
selects for his greatest picture the Last Supper, 
he is wise. He can do nothing else. 

Beauty has its home in character. The most 
beautiful thing in Greek literature is Antigone. 
A lofty, loyal, dauntless human soul conducts 
to the true sphere of beauty. You cannot think 
of Antigone, beautiful and loving beauty, as 
anything else than a pilgrim to the cradle of 
Christ, a pilgrim finally to the cross of Christ. 
In tragedy her character shines out in beauty ; 
in tragedy Christ's heavenly grace appears. He 
is, therefore, no lover of beauty who never sees 
it as it burns in the highest human character. 
Those who worship only sensuous beauty dwell 
in the land of shadows ; they are like men who 
see the stars reflected in a pond, and who dive 
for them there. They dive after reflections, they 
pursue shadows, they worship images. Wise lov- 
ers of beauty look up. There in the inaccessible 
heights the real eternal stars shine. There is the 
poetry of heaven. And in human character, in 
brave, benign, self-sacrificing service, in souls 
devoted to the highest, is the true beauty of the 
world. Whoever sees that will travel onward till 
he comes to the character that is the grace and 
the truth of human history. 

If you have ever seen a beautiful soul in man, 



254 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

in woman, or in child ; if you have ever stood 
before the apocalypse of a true mother's heart, 
or a noble father's spirit, if you have ever in this 
world actually beheld a beautiful human char- 
acter, you know that there is nothing in the 
heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the 
waters under the earth to match that loveliness. 
Thenceforth, grateful for every vision of beauty, 
you seek for the beauty of a great soul, and 
seeking for the beauty of a great soul you find 
yourself at last by the side of the supreme soul 
of Christ. 

3. Others are moved by pity. In the religion 
of Buddha pity is fundamental. The image of 
Buddha is always an expression of painless com- 
passion. And this is the secret of his power over 
the uncounted millions of suffering men and 
women in the hopeless East. He cannot remove, 
he cannot mitigate their sufferings, he cannot 
change the law of misery under which all exist- 
ence moves, but he can behold it in loving, sub- 
dued, gracious compassion. That enfolding com- 
passion of the Buddha, although it can change 
nothing, is nevertheless an inexpressible comfort 
to the hopeless sufferer from the misery of being. 

Perhaps this is the point of contact between 
what is highest in the East and in the West. 
Perhaps the pity of Jesus has not been ade- 
quately presented by our preachers in foreign 



WISE MEN AND THEIR IDEALS 255 

lands. The sufferings of these peoples are very 
great, and if it could be shown that the compas- 
sion of Jesus is deeper far than that of Buddha, 
diviner far, efficacious also over mind and body, 
the channel of a redeeming grace, the pathway 
and agent of an endless hope, perhaps these 
vast inert populations would more willingly open 
their hearts to the power of the Christian gospel. 
First there comes to the cold earth, locked under 
the stern hand of winter, the warm spring rain ; 
the heavens pour this living tide into the ground 
until it is filled with it, softened, made aware of 
a new visitation. Then comes the sunshine, and 
then new life and hope everywhere. So it is with 
these suffering continents. Present first of all the 
compassionate Christ. Flood the being of these 
peoples with the heavenly sympathy of the Lord. 
Let it rain down upon them until they know 
that a divine power has entered into their ex- 
istence. Then throw upon them the glowing 
illumination of Christian truth. Perhaps in this 
way the wilderness and the solitary place might 
rejoice, and the desert blossom as the rose. 
Perhaps in this way compassion might be the 
channel of a hope that would stir to effort these 
stagnant races and create in them a desire to live 
forever, that forever they might climb into the 
blessedness and the strength of good men. 
Pity in the form of sympathy is indeed the 



256 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

only path to a multitude of hearts among our- 
selves. Thousands are so concerned and ab- 
sorbed with their sufferings that they see no- 
thing and hear nothing that does not first of all 
ring into their thoughts the notes of sympathy. 
They live as it were within the sound of the 
church bell, but the bell is unheard, or heard 
only as a disturber of the peace, till it becomes a 
chime of bells and plays some soft melody laden 
with the memories of other years, or some refrain 
of sorrow that pours upon the air the burden 
in their own sad souls. The voice that arrests 
attention, that gains a hearing, that finally 
opens the sealed receptivities of the soul, is, in 
a multitude of cases, the voice of compassion. 
So Jesus moved among men. His nature en- 
folded the existence of children and mothers, 
of publicans and sinners, of rich and poor, of 
suffering men and women everywhere, and they 
felt that in his presence they were understood 
and their burden of sorrow justly measured and 
weighed. What Jesus was in this aspect of his 
character we are too gross to dream. We try to 
figure that mighty, self-oblivious soul, with its 
divine outward look, everywhere scanning the 
faces of the men and women whom he met, read- 
ing the great secrets of their hearts, and pouring 
in unbidden the tides of a benign sympathy, en- 
folding all in the heavenly comfort of a sublime 



WISE MEN AND THEIR IDEALS 257 

compassion ; hut in our best endeavor we fail of 
any adequate image of what must have been the 
heavenly grace of his approach to men. 

If we look into the Gospels, we see at once 
how very few came to Jesus because of a hunger 
for goodness, and how many because of the cry 
of the heart for sympathy. The Syropheenician 
mother and the centurion came, as others did, 
for their children. Something in their human 
existence was inexpressibly precious ; something 
had gone wrong at the heart of this joyous 
possession. Something there was in Jesus that 
drew such people toward him. He might or he 
might not be able to help them ; of one thing 
they were sure, they would be encircled in his 
sympathy. Perhaps, in a way, this was the at- 
tractive power of Jesus over his disciples. We 
are not sure that any one of the twelve Apostles 
was drawn to Jesus by the great and baffled 
passion for righteousness. Paul is the only Apos- 
tle, so far as we know, whose first interest in 
Jesus was an exalted moral interest. The other 
men who became the disciples and apostles of 
Jesus came to him because of his illuminating 
and comforting sympathy. They found in him 
other things, and they developed for him other 
interests. But this was the aboriginal interest. 
Rabbi, where dwellest thou? Come and see. 
The lesser and feebler natures came that they 



258 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

might stand in the comfort and hope of the 
greater. Nicodemus was of this order. He was 
torn with perplexity and unrest. He could not 
understand himself. He was not moved by any 
decided desire for personal goodness. He came 
that he might be understood, he came for the 
illumination and peace of a great compassion. 
And so it was all through the ministry of Jesus. 
He had an inexhaustible fund of noble sympa- 
thy. Men and women sought it in their dis- 
tress, as one might seek perpetual summer. 

Christ's mood of compassion toward man is still 
mighty. In this world there are so many hard 
attitudes toward life. There is brutal indifference. 
How many among rich and poor alike, how many 
among resourceful natures of all classes, are bru- 
tally indifferent toward the fate of their fellow 
men ! Like the priest and the Levite, they pass 
by on the other side. Suffering is a thing to be 
shunned and forgotten. There is the cynical 
attitude. Here there is interest, but it is that 
of the mocker under the cross. Ha, thou that 
destroyest the temple and in three days buildest 
it again ! There is the mood of blind criticism. 
It is not brutal, it is not cynical, it is simjuy 
blind. He saved others, himself he could not 
save. There is the attitude of moral justice. 
Its maxim is: Whatsoever a man soweth, that 
shall he also reap. It is just, but oh, how severe ! 



WISE MEN AND TIIEIR IDEALS 259 

Men seldom start on equal terms with the moral 
order. There is nearly always a handicap some- 
where. And the justice that notes all this rises 
into compassion. This higher justice was the 
habitual mood of Jesus, lie saw the tragedy in 
which all human life is caught. The ideal asks 
for perfection ; the soul is made for perfection, 
but the soul is in alliance with a body of death. 
This confusion of higher and lower in man, of 
the will to follow the best and the impulse of the 
animal, the strength and the weakness that make 
up this great and pathetic humanity of ours, 
Jesus completely understood. He saw it all, and 
the sea of troubles that rose through it, and he 
was filled with compassion. The help that man 
needs is the help of the compassionate teacher 
who can wait and work for the far distant end. 

This is the sublime compassion of Jesus, and 
all who love it follow that love till it brings 
them to him. What is there in any other way 
of regarding the world at all comparable to this ? 
Is not this the way to think of our fellow men? 
Do we not occasionally pray that into this high 
and pure spirit we may be lifted ? And when 
we are, for a moment, thus minded, is there any 
being in all history who appeals to us, and who 
draws us toward him, as Christ does ? Is he not 
like music ? I recall the effect of a German band 
upon the life in one of our great thoroughfares. 



260 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

It struck up the simple refrain, " There's a land 
that is fairer than day, and by faith we can 
see it afar." Every person, every wagon, every 
car, every moving object stood still, all windows 
were opened, and silent, eager faces crowded 
them ; the business of the street for a few great 
moments was absolutely suspended. There was 
something in that music that arrested, that 
found, that comforted every man. One might 
have spoken to those souls, or sung to them, or 
gotten up a show for them, but the multitude 
would have paid little heed to it. It was that 
strain of music that hushed all hearts into peace. 
Something like this is the effect upon the world 
of the compassion of Jesus. It is so unearthly, 
and yet it is what the world needs. It is so 
unlike the strife and cruelty among men, and 
yet it finds in man the greater man that cries 
out for it. It opens the depths in the human 
soul, and calls out hidden capacities and long- 
ings. It wields upon men the power of great 
music. Here is something which, for a brief 
space at least, men cannot resist. Here is a 
spirit that compels the world to stand still, and 
that wins to itself every seeker after a higher 
justice in the world. 

4. Some are led to the Master by the vision 
of that which I think is highest in his character, 
— his magnanimity. When the world is wiser, 



WISE MEN AND THEIR WEALS 2G1 

when it learns to value things in wisdom, it will 
be profoundly affected by the magnanimity of 
Jesus. At present this aspect of his character 
is too high ; it is like the far-soaring summit of 
some great mountain. It is seldom seen. It is 
lost in cloud and storm. Our human atmosphere 
breeds these clouds and tempests, and therefore 
what is loftiest is seldomest beheld. A better day 
will surely come, a serener air, when the highest 
in Jesus can stand over men in all the power of 
its sublime beauty. Offer to feed the poor, and 
your tables will be crowded ; offer to entertain 
the rich, and your feast of wit will gather a mul- 
titude ; offer to teach men the way of wisdom, 
and the number will diminish ; offer to men a 
great opportunity for goodness, and fewer still 
will come ; offer the highest, the magnanimity of 
Christ, and men will say, with Peter, " I under- 
stand not what thou sayest." This is the pathos 
of the world. The highest is not so dear to man 
as the lowest ; the highest is not so sweet to good 
men as the lower. Many will read a worthless 
romance and never open Shakespeare or Milton. 
Many will read the Sunday newspaper and never 
look at the great words of psalmist, prophet, and 
apostle. Strait is the gate and narrow is the 
way that leadeth unto life, and few there be that 
find it. But to those few, how exhilarating, how 
divine, is that narrow way ! 



262 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

The magnanimity of Christ is higher than his 
pity. The power to deal justly with men is 
great, the power to pity men who deal unjustly 
is greater ; the power to regard them with no 
bitterness when one is the victim of their injus- 
tice is the greatest. Jesus always dealt justly 
by men. His fairness is one great power in his 
character. He looked upon men and women in 
their wickedness with profound compassion. He 
was able, when he received no justice, when he 
received instead injustice and outrage, humilia- 
tion and contempt of the last and worst degree, 
to rise above it all, to regard the world without 
bitterness, to carry it in its blindness to God in 
his prayer. In the tragedy of life we all stand. 
Some men deserve much good, and they get more 
than they deserve. This they know, and this is 
their cross. Some men deserve much good, and 
get less than they deserve, and this is their bit- 
terness. Some men when they are good are 
treated as if they were bad. They belong among 
the honorable servants of mankind ; they are 
placed among the malign forces. One there was 
who deserved the best and who received the 
worst, who was the supreme servant of the race, 
and who was crucified between two thieves. Here 
in this tragic world we all live. Somewhere 
our bitterness lies. Are we less deserving than 
the world thinks? Are we more guilty than the 



WISE MEN AND Til KIR IDEALS 203 

world knows? Are we worthier than it believes? 
Arc we wrongly placed? How under these con- 
ditions do we behave? Here is the sovereign 
test of man, here is the sovereign test of man's 
world. Oh, the tragedy in which we all are in- 
volved! Oh, the pain to good men of overesti- 
mation, of underestimation, of mistaken estima- 
tion, of infamous estimation ! In this tragedy 
Jesus lived his life. He is bone of our bone and 
flesh of our flesh. He is w r ith us in the great 
waters, and they smite him as they do us. He 
is with us in the fiery furnace, and it consumes 
him as it consumes us. But in this tragedy we 
behold in him what we long to see in our- 
selves, and cannot see because it is not there. 
We behold in him the sense of justice outraged 
by the treatment which he received, and yet with- 
out bitterness, without losing his high regard for 
men, without uttering one unseemly word, with- 
out giving expression to one thought or feeling 
lower than the highest. We see in Jesus one who, 
when he has done the best that man can do for 
his brother, and receives as wages the worst, is 
able to look down upon those that put him to 
death and say, " Father, forgive them, for they 
know not what they do ! " This is the highest 
in Jesus ; when we love magnanimity, as one 
day men will, that love will guide to the Lord. 
5. More general than the guiding ideals men- 



264 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

tioned are the ideals of life's fulfillment and 
life's worth. Men who are conscious of a soul, 
of a great and happy range of powers, who are 
aware that in the humanity that they bear they 
have the secret of a wonderful existence, who 
come to look upon themselves as they regard 
some rare musical instrument, usually ponder 
the paths of their feet. They seek knowledge, 
insight, skill ; they seek teachers, exemplars, wise 
and inspiring leaders. The desire for life's ful- 
fillment gives them a wide and vigilant outlook. 
They look for help as the eagle does for prey. 
They fly high, circle wide, and with keen vision 
see from afar. When any light traveling the 
way of Christ meets their sight, they follow it. 
They seek the rest of the heart in the highest, 
and every path and every guide bring them on 
their way to the Lord. The Ethiopian whom 
Philip met in the desert south of Jerusalem is 
an example of the whole class. He was a seeker 
after life's fulfillment. He found in Philip a 
shining guide, and he followed this guide to the 
heart of Christ. 

The ideal of life's worth is of still more gen- 
eral power. Where there is love there is the 
sense of the worth of existence. It is impossible 
for human beings to be members of happy homes, 
without the consciousness of life's worth. Fathers 
and mothers would like to believe that the chil- 



WISE MEN AND THEIR IDEALS 265 

dren who are so fair and dear to them are fair 
and dear to the Eternal. Every fortunate son 
and daughter would like to believe that God 
estimates even more highly than they do the 
noble father, the beloved mother, who has passed 
out of this world. Find anywhere a lover, and 
you find one who would gladly believe that his 
beloved is the beloved of God* And when the 
heart is great, when it is burdened with more 
and more of the precious things of love, it 
instinctively looks about it for support. It can- 
not bear the burden of its own love, unless God 
is with it. Who can bring it to God ? Who can 
give it the best insight into the character of the 
I ufinite ? Whoever can in any measure meet that 
demand becomes to that soul a guiding star, and 
that guiding star leads naturally to the Lord, 
who gives the vision of the God without whom 
not a sparrow falleth to the ground, who num- 
bers even the hairs of our head, to whom men 
are joined in the deathless bond of Fatherhood 
and childhood. To that protection for the lov- 
ing heart men of love come at last. 

Here we see plainly why some men move 
toward Christ with the profoundest interest, and 
why others turn away from him. Men turn away 
from him because they desire none of the things 
that he has to give. They are not wise men. 
They do not desire wisdom. Some one asked Dr. 



266 . THROUGH MAN TO GOB 

Mayhew why it was that the Song of Solomon 
was in the Bible and that the Wisdom of Solomon 
was left out. His answer was that as a general 
thing people are fonder of songs than they are 
of wisdom. Men without wisdom behold no 
shining ideals, and without ideals men do not 
search for the Highest. The hardest thing that 
the best physician has to do is to create an appe- 
tite where there is none. Feats in surgery, in 
wise prescription for the elimination of the 
poison of disease, are as nothing compared with 
the task of creating appetite in a desireless and 
impotent organism. Yet without some degree 
of eager receptivity, all the food in the world is 
worthless. The hardest task of the man of God 
to-day is to create the taste for divine things, to 
awaken an interest in them, and a longing for 
them. Teaching those who desire to know, com- 
forting those whose hearts are open to comfort, 
supplying with thought and inspiration these 
noble men and women under the stress of exist- 
ence, is easy, is indeed nothing, to the task of 
getting men without interest in the things of the 
spirit to care for them. It is like raising the 
dead. We do not expect the dead to wait upon 
the Lord in these earthly courts ; and we can 
hardly expect those whose inward fire has sunk 
to a mere smoking cinder to flame with passion 
for things divine. The widest and most tragic 



WISE MEN AND THEIR IDEALS 267 

contrast among men is not between the rich and 
the poor, the joyous and the sorrowful, those in 
outward comfort and those in outward misery, 
but between the soul that sings, "My heart and 
my flesh cry out after the living God," and the 
soul that sighs, " My heart and my flesh are as 
dust and ashes within me when I think of God." 
Son of man, can these dry hones live? O Lord, 
thou knowest ! What can make them live but 
the breath of the Eternal? "What but the breath 
of the Holy Spirit can rekindle the dying flame 
of high desire? 

That serious and aspiring men should move 
into an ever deeper appreciation of Jesus, is of all 
things the most natural. The force of gravity 
pulls irresistibly the smaller body to the greater, 
and where souls are kindred, the weaker moves 
toward the stronger by a similar inevitableness. 
If a man is deeply concerned about the quality of 
his existence, if moral excellence fascinates him, 
if the greater ideals of human goodness greet him 
from afar, if his soul discovers in merely animal 
pleasure a circle of death, if the hunger and thirst 
of his being rise into a hunger and thirst after 
righteousness, and if he is eager for illuminations 
and inspirations in his quest for moral peace, he 
is almost sure to end his quest in the school of 
Christ. So it is with the seeker after wisdom in 
all her forms. Such a soul is like the iron that 



268 THBOUGH MAN TO GOD 

cannot resist the magnet. In the sphere of Christ 
the devout lover of wisdom is irresistibly drawn 
to Christ. His aim is one with that of Christ, his 
moral being is one with that of Christ, and he is 
but going to his own better self when he is going 
to Christ. He is seeking the highest manhood, 
and how can he help moving toward Christ ? Can 
one seek light, and not desire the full day ? Can 
one love the highest human goodness and not love 
Christ ? You see in your child the sense of beauty. 
You watch your child under the charm of the 
beautiful things in your home, and in the nature 
that lies round your home. You take your child 
to some of the great sights of the world. You 
travel through the natural wonders of our own 
land, you stand before some masterpiece in paint- 
ing, you hear great music in the land of the great 
composers. You know in advance what the effect 
will be upon your child. The love of beauty is 
there, and when beauty comes in surpassing form, 
the love rises to greet it. So it is in the sphere 
of the spirit. When we see men who are lovers 
of goodness, we are sure that when they behold 
him they will become lovers of Christ. The mood 
is there which impels towards the highest, and 
when the Highest appears they cleave to him as 
the goal of desire. " Your father Abraham re- 
joiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was 
glad." He saw the heavenly ideal, and he looked 



WISE MEN ANT) THEIR IDEALS 2G9 

forward to the day when in some great human 
soul it would find complete embodiment. What 

is the Messianic hope of Israel but the star that 
wise men beheld in the east? As all the stars 
travel toward the zenith, so all goodness leads 
up toward the supreme Christ. 

I must remind you again of the profound par- 
able in the words of the text. "Wise men saw the 
star ; only the wise see these shining and mov- 
ing ideals that are the assurance of all progress 
and all peace. Wise men saw the star in the east, 
in the place where they lived. In the region 
where they live and labor and suffer it is still 
true that wise men see everlasting lights. They 
do not need to travel far to see them; in the 
heart of life's toil and weariness they need only 
to look up and behold them overhead in serene, 
prophetic brightness. A mother in sorrow for her 
child, the sorrow that is the great obverse of her 
love, a father longing for a deeper and tenderer 
heart, young men and women in the world's work, 
close to the world's uncleanness, praying for a 
strong and an uncontaminated humanity, the 
anxious by the bed of pain, the bereaved by the 
open grave, and the lonely heart under the awful 
burden of its solitude, have but to pause, look 
up, and behold the heavenly ideal that guides 
the feet of the faithful to the light that never 
was on sea or land, and into the peace that 



270 THBOUGH MAN TO GOD 

passeth all understanding. In the east, where you 
are, as you are, and in the heart of your toil and 
pain, look up, and behold that serene and beckon- 
ing star. It is the great tie between us and the 
Highest. Jesus is not foreign to us. He is each 
soul at its best, each soul as God meant it should 
be. He is our ideal realized, and when we follow 
that ideal, we come at length to him. Our ideals 
are the moving lights that connect our poor, 
isolated souls with the life in Christ, with the 
life in God. We live in the east, but our ideals 
travel until they stand over the cradle, over the 
manhood of Christ ; and when we follow them, 
we move away from our. isolation into the great- 
ness of the life in God. We have come again 
to this great Christmas season. Oh, that we 
might be wise ! Oh, that we might see in the 
east some heavenly and moving illumination ! 
Oh, that we might follow it across all wild and 
sorrowful places, through all lonely valleys, over 
all weary plains and looming mountains, till life 
is blessed in the vision of God in Christ ! 



XV 
THE FINAL THEODICY 

" And he hath said unto me, My grace iB sufficient for thee : for my 
power is made perfect in weakness." 

'I Cor. xii, 9. 

Wiikn we first begin to consider it, the order 
of this world is not at all to our minds. If we 
ever come to think well of it, if we ever come to 
like it, without exception it is through a great 
reconciliation. We pass from disapproval to 
quiet acceptance through a profounder insight, a 
nobler wisdom, a loftier experience, a vaster and 
surer hope. At the first, the order of this world 
is for all honest and serious persons a supreme 
disappointment. 

Without audacity, without hypocrisy, in all 
sad sincerity, we declare that if we had made 
this world, we should have made it differently. 
If we had made this world, we should have put 
no winter in our sky, no storms on our seas, no 
volcanoes in our islands and continents, no reign 
of death over the empire of life. If we had made 
the human race, we should have put into it no 
physical defect, no mental eccentricity, no bias of 
will toward evil. If we had made this world, we 



272 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

should not have wrapped it in impenetrable 
and appalling mystery. 

Onr disappointment here is deep and sad. It 
is more. It takes the form of revolt. We have 
seen a child — beautiful and gifted — on some 
radiant morning looking out upon the world in 
perfect admiration and joy. We have seen the 
change pass over the countenance of that child as 
it comes to realize, for the first time, the cruelty, 
the suffering, and the death that reign in that 
fair world; still more, as it comes to know man's 
inhumanity to man, the child's joy is turned to 
grief, its admiration «is changed to horror. For 
the moment, sympathy with nature and man- 
kind is changed into fierce hatred and revolt. 

At the beginning we are equally disappointed 
with our Master Jesus Christ. His programme 
is not our programme for ourselves. He does 
not at first fulfill our expectations. He does not 
keep his promises as we understand them. He 
does not remove our diseases nor heal our sick- 
nesses. Only fanatics believe that ; and for men 
who value sure thinking, fanaticism is too great a 
price to pay for peace. He does not remove our 
weaknesses all at once. He does not lift the fixed 
boundaries of existence, or change the order in 
which we live. He does not transport us to the 
Paradise in which there is no forbidden tree, in 
which there is no serpent, no possibility of fatal 



THE FINAL TUEODICY 273 

deceit, and no fall from honor. This is not our 
Muster's method with ns. He leaves us where he 
found us, in the world of toil, misunderstanding, 
contradiction, sorrow, and death. He leaves us 
here, and he works upon us slowly. Slowly along 
the avenues of thought, along the paths of feel- 
ing, by the power of his spirit upon our spirit, 
slowly he works upon us, almost imperceptibly. 
Sickness is still sickness, temptation is still 
temptation, the severity of the world is the same 
relentless thing, loss is still loss, the passing of 
youth is the immemorial fact, unchanged, the 
coining of age with its infirmity, with its inca- 
pacity, and, most melancholy of all, with its all too 
frequent breakdown and wreck, is the old, unal- 
tered, hateful, mocking face of fate. What ad- 
vantage hath the wise over the fool ? What gain 
is there in Christian discipleship ? What does 
Christ do for those who love him ? It is clear 
that he does not change their world or their fate ; 
nor does he change them at a stroke. 

Here come in the great endeavors of high minds 
to justify the ways of God to man. One of the 
noblest of all Plato's discussions is that in which 
he meets the original bewilderment of the young 
mind as it surveys the world. Great and beau- 
tiful is his showing of the interior strength 
and peace of the righteous soul. He had laid to 
heart the great utterance of his dying Master : 



274 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

No evil can happen to a good man, whether he 
be alive or dead. Wide and daring is the reach 
of thought of Leibnitz in the same great service. 
Milton's motive in "Paradise Lost" and "Para- 
dise Regained " has its elevation here, and at the 
same time its closeness to human need. We 
must recall his solemn invocation : — 

" And chiefly thou, O spirit that dost prefer 
Before all temples th' upright heart and pure, 
Instruct me, for thou know'st, . . . what in me is dark 
Illumine, what is low raise and support; 
That to the height of this great argument 
I may assert eternal Providence, 
And justify the way of God to men." 

Milton is thinking not primarily of the fall of 
Adam, but of the fall of Cromwell's Common- 
wealth, the wreck therein of English freedom, 
and the great contradiction of God that rises out 
of the depths of this disaster. Milton was driven 
back upon the universal disappointment of man 
in God's world by his own bitter disappointment 
as a freeman. In this way we all live. The per- 
sonal sorrow sends us to raise questions in the 
heart of the human and ageless sorrow. We must 
seek peace to-day with this stern order through 
finding light. We go with Paul in his quest; 
we join him in his discovery ; we seek to rest in 
the great vindication, the great theodicy in which 
he rested. 



THE FINAL THEODICY 275 

There comes a time when .noble and candid 
men are willing to confess that perhaps God 

knew better than they how to make the world. 
There comes a time when serious disciples of 
Jesus Christ are willing to admit that perhaps 
their Master knows his work better than they. 
Paul had come to this mood. He had been tor- 
mented with some strange experience. There 
was a thorn in his flesh ; it was cutting and 
tearing there every moment. It was a messenger 
of Satan sent to buffet him. That this thorn 
might be removed, Paul threw his whole soul 
into prayer. It was an intense, a passionate, and 
persistent cry to God for relief from terrible 
pain. It was a cry for a changed environment. 
It represents the great burden of the world's 
prayer in all ages. Ninety-nine out of every 
hundred prayers that have been offered since the 
morning of time have had reference to environ- 
ment. We pray to be delivered from pinching 
poverty, from uncongenial tasks, from the pre- 
sence of people who are unfriendly and unsym- 
pathetic. We pray that failure may be averted, 
that sickness may not come near our beloved, 
that the shadow of death may be turned back. 
We pray for a heavenly environment, for a lot 
in life accordant with our dreams of good, for a 
Paradise without a forbidden tree and without 
a serpent. These are the burden of the world's 



276 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

prayers ; and these are the prayers to which the 
great denial comes. Tennyson puts the case with 
truth and pathos : — 

" O mother, praying God will save 

Thy sailor, — while thy head is bow'd, 
His heavy-shotted hainrnock-shroud 
Drops in his vast and wandering grave." 

To our first reflections, there is something appall- 
ing in the absolute negative which God returns 
to most of the prayers that are offered to Him by 
mortal men. 

Paul's prayer was not granted, but something 
better came than that for which he prayed, — 
enduring strength, victorious manhood, the joy of 
the Lord, the sense of a triumphant God working 
in the very heart of his human weaknesses and 
sufferings. Thus it was that the world as God 
made it became for Paul the best of all possible 
worlds. Here Paul came upon the great vindica- 
tion of God's ways to men, the final theodicy. 
Upon this discovery several remarks must be made. 

1. This world, as it stands, as God made it, is 
man's supreme opportunity. It is his opportu- 
nity for what ? For heroism, for the highest type 
of manhood. One thing is clear, absolutely clear, 
that this world was not made for cowards. For 
them and for all their kin it is the worst possible 
world. It calls for endurance, self-denial, devo- 
tion, magnanimity, brave service with no stipula- 






THE FINAL THEODICY 277 

tion about wages. It runs counter, in its great 
tragic currents, to the entire egoism of man. 
From the egoistic position it appears a shocking 
world. 

On the other hand, this world as it stands is 
the best possible world for all who would be daunt- 
less, chivalrous, of a temper fine and high. The 
bird that flies in the storm and prevails, the ship 
that sails in the tempest and outlives it, the hard- 
pressed toiler who can yet make both ends meet, 
the business man consumed by anxiety who is 
yet able to control his business and make it a 
success, the person who is up to the neck in temp- 
t at ion who still keeps his head above the flood, 
the individual who has laid in the hungry earth 
his beloved and whose great cry is " The Lord 
gave, and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be 
the name of the Lord," is surely a conqueror and 
possessed of a conqueror's joy. 

In your Paradise for cowards you find no pa- 
triarch walking with God, no great idealist going 
out " not knowing whither he went," trusting in 
the Infinite, none enduring as seeing Him who 
is invisible. In your Paradise for cowards there 
is no Hebrew psalm, no epic of Job, no oracle 
of prophet, no sweet Bethlehem, no Gethsemane, 
no Calvary, no Mount of Ascension. In the hate- 
ful world where everything makes for luxury, 
idleness, effeminacy, you have no heroes, no mar- 



278 THROUGH MAN TO GOB 

tyrs, no reformers. In such a world there can be 
no such figure as the Greek Antigone, pure, vic- 
torious in the arms of death, a vision of strength 
and glory forever. If we had made this world, 
we should have made tragedy impossible ; and in 
so doing we should have made the human race 
poor indeed. For the tragedy of the world is the 
garden of the Lord. In that awful movement of 
cross-currents between ideals and experiences, 
dear hopes and blank negations, to which we give 
the name of tragedy, the supreme achievements 
and possessions of man are found, — strength, 
love, dauntless courage, inward victory, and the 
sense that below the waves and billows that have 
gone over us is the tide that will carry us, alive 
or dead, to our own shore. The world as it is has 
brought to men and women the vision of home. 
The world as it is has somehow permitted love 
and its sacrament. The world as it is has wrung 
from the human heart the great psalms. It has 
brought from the human mind its great light. 
It has somehow given us great character. The 
world as it is has given us Jesus Christ and all 
his worthful followers. 

2. This world as it is, is God's opportunity. 
When Paul began life, he had many things in 
him that he needed taken out of him. He was a 
proud man. His joy in existence consisted largely 
in his sense of superiority to other men. That 



THE FINAL THEODICY 279 

is a tremendous weakness. It means isolation 
from much of the best life of the race ; it means, 
therefore, sore limitation, inevitable impoverish- 
ment, incapacity for certain great experiences, 
and along all true lines diminished capacity for 
growth. Pride is, at the same time, a stain upon 
the best character, like an ink spot on a piece of 
tapestry, like a poison working in a strong and 
otherwise sound body, like a hidden falsehood 
corrupting the integrity of an honest intellect. 
This was one of Paul's weaknesses ; it shut 
him in from the great life of humanity, it gave 
him a mean delight. 

In this world as it is God took Paul, and so 
wrought upon him that his chief joy was found 
in the common possession of Christian men, — 
in his intelligence directed upon God with devout 
and grateful homage, in his heart open to the 
empire of Christ and invoking his presence, in 
his life given in service to the kingdom of God. 
Paul came to have his chief joy in the God who is 
the Father of all, in the Christ who is the Saviour 
of all, in the kingdom that ruleth over all. 

Was not that a great thing to do for Paul ? 
Was the world not a good world in which so 
great a thing was done ? Was not the proud 
man in his proud isolation God's opportunity? 
Did not the stern order of things serve God- as. 
a field for the accomplishment of his great work ? 



280 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

He found the proud man upon his poor perch, 
not fit for an owl, and he brought him down to 
the sense of equality with the humblest of his 
kind. For, after all, the best gift is humanity, 
and every human being shares in that. You recall 
Browning's great words in " Paracelsus." The 
proud man has come at last to his strength : — 

" I want to be forgotten even by God. 
But if that cannot be, dear Festus, lay me, 
When I shall die, within some narrow grave, 
Not by itself — for that would be too proud — 
But where such graves are thickest ; let it look 
Nowise distinguished from the hillocks round, 
So that the peasant at his brother's bed 
May tread upon my own and know it not ; 
And we shall all be equal at the last." 

Another weakness of Paul, akin to that de- 
scribed, was his abnormal sense of tribal and 
sectarian distinction. Was he not a Pharisee of 
the Pharisees ? Was he not of the tribe of Ben- 
jamin ? Was he not a Hebrew of the Hebrews ? 
And did any man ever wrap his garments about 
him in the sense of exclusive privilege with 
more joy than he? In this mood, living in this 
world, God found Paul. Hear him speak when 
he had been delivered from this weakness. " How- 
beit what things were gain to me, these have I 
counted loss for Christ. Yea verily, and I count 
all things to be loss for the excellency of the 
knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord : for whom 



THE FINAL THEODICY 281 

I suffered the loss of all things, and do count 
them but refuse, that I may gain Christ : . . . that 
I may know him, and the power of his resurrec- 
tion, and the fellowship of his sufferings." This 
man lias entered the highest life of his kind. 
He has surrendered exelusiveness for community 
in the sorrow, service, and hope of a redeemed 
race. He has abandoned aristocracy under law 
for democracy under the spirit of God. In this 
world God has turned this Jewish aristocrat into 
the supreme democrat of his age ; so that now 
he goes everywhere, to Jews, Greeks, Romans, 
barbarians, bond, and free, as the debtor of all, 
struggling through monumental services to dis- 
charge this debt to the race through fellowship 
with whom God has given him a supreme life. 
Who would not live in this world for this end? 
Who would not suffer that he might become, 
like Paul, the broad-breasted, high-souled, daunt- 
less servant of man ? And who that has become 
a free communicant through service in the best 
life of the race would not find in this experience 
a witness for the divine order of the world ? 

Paul was naturally an irritable man. Almost 
all persons worth anything are troubled with this 
form of weakness. It is the defect of their virtue. 
They are sensitive, full of zeal, full of insight 
and power. The tendency to impatience and 
irritability goes with these high qualities. Irri- 



282 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

tability is simply unusual capacity to stimulation, 
to inspiration. The men who feel quickly and 
profoundly the appeals from the wise feel quickly 
and deeply the appeals from the foolish. A dis- 
cord is a disaster to a Beethoven, because to him 
a harmony is a kind of heaven. The great, keen, 
intense, responsive soul has unusual privileges 
among the wise and unusual miseries among the 
foolish. There is little credit to an oyster for its 
calm; but there is a great deal of credit to a 
high-strung man or woman in the exercise of 
benign self-control. 

There is one incident in Paul's life that shows 
his temper. He was called before the High 
Priest to answer for his behavior. The High 
Priest stood to Jewish society very much as the 
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United 
States stands to our citizens. The High Priest 
said something that was morally wrong-; he com- 
manded some one to smite Paul for what he had 
been saying. This outrageous command ignited 
a powder magazine in Paul's manhood. He 
shouted to the High Priest : " God shall smite 
thee, thou whited wall ! " Imagine a citizen 
using that style of address to the Chief Justice. 
Paul apologized and withdrew the offensive re- 
mark; nevertheless, the remark is illuminating, 
as it shows the capacity in him for sudden and 
terrible rage. And here was God's opportunity. 



THE FINAL THEODICY 283 

Before life was done, under the divine discipline 
Paul had become one <>f the most patient, one of 
the most magnanimous, one of the most com- 
pletely self-controlled men that ever trod the 
earth. Are these things not worth considering? 
eJ ust as this world is the hero's chance to show 
himself a hero, so this world is God's chance to 
show his power in the redeemed manhood in it. 
Think well of the world that gives this chance 
both to man and to God. 

Two contrasted conceptions of the highest 
human character appear in the ancient world. 
To the highest Greek thought the best human 
life was the self-sufficient. It is a noble con- 
ception with many elements of truth in it. It 
fails of completeness because it isolates man from 
the sympathetic heart of the universe, from the 
store of strength that exists for man in the In- 
finite soul. The self-sufficient life is unattainable ; 
its ideal carries with it something of pride and 
disdain, and it does not reckon with the weak- 
ness of mortal existence. A few rare souls, be- 
cause of fortunate instinctive receptivities toward 
the Eternal helper of men, may climb high in 
the composure of self-sufficient manhood. Alas ! 
for the vast majority, if man must be his own 
maker, if there be no One mightier than he 
working with him and in him. Indeed, there is 
no such thing as self-sufficiency. While we live, 



284 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

we nourish the body out of the infinite ; when we 
live our best, we nourish the heart out of home, 
friendship, history, humanity ; we live in God. 

The gospel has nothing to say of self-suffi- 
ciency. Jesus says, " I can of my own self do 
nothing." Paul says, " Our sufficiency is of 
God." For the self-sufficient life of Greek 
thought we have the God-sufficient life of the 
gospel. In God we live and move and have our 
being. God is our refuge and strength. There 
is no hope for man but in God. " The eternal 
God is thy refuge, and underneath are the ever- 
lasting arms." This is the ideal that answers to 
human need. The weakness, the pain, the limita- 
tion, the thorn in the flesh is here ; here it re- 
mains, destroying all hope of self-sufficiency, but 
making ready the soul for God's sufficiency. 
We shall attain the self-sufficient life when we 
can put our hand upon the hilt of Orion's sword ; 
every morning we may awake in the conscious- 
ness of the sufficient grace of God. 

Here is our difficulty. The world as it is, 
without God, is too much for us. We take our 
opportunity and we forget to give God his oppor- 
tunity. You have seen a cloud in the shadow 
toward evening, cold, dark, unsightly, and you 
have seen that same cloud float into the path of 
the setting sun. You beheld it then no longer 
cold and dark, but all fair, all dyed, all glorified 



THE FINAL THEODICY 285 

in the blazing west. That cloud in the shadow 
is man without Grod. That cloud all light, all 

fire, all splendor in the path of the setting sun is 
nian's humanity in the path of God, shot through 
with his love, purified and transfigured by his 
glorious Presence. For those who live in God 
the vain aspiration of Faust becomes experi- 
ence and hope. Watching the setting sun Faust 
sings : — 

" But still doth he survive, 
Still speeds he cm with life-diffusing beam — 
Oh ! that no wing uplifts me from the ground 
Nearer and nearer after him to strive! 
Then should I the reposing world behold 
Still in this everlasting evening glow. 
In vain the rugged mountain rears his breast 
With darkening cliff and cave to bar my way, 
Onward in heaven still onward is my flight, — 
Before me day — behind me is the night." 



XVI 
THE UPPER ROOM 

"And when they were come in, they went up into the upper room, 
where they were abiding." 

Acts i, 13. 

What are some of the human sources of wisdom 
and peace ? That may seem to be a vain question 
to those who seek for the great answer to the needs 
of man's spirit outside the sphere of man's being. 
It is not vain to those who connect the best in 
man with the deepest in God. The horn of the 
old Norse god could not be emptied because the 
lower end of it rested in the sea ; whoever tried 
to empty that horn tried to drain the inexhaust- 
ible sea. Man's soul is like that horn. In de- 
tachment it is weak, in isolation it is nothing. 
In its normal life it rests in God. It is great be- 
cause it rests in Him. God stands in an eternal 
flood tide in the instincts, capacities, and experi- 
ences of prophetic souls. When we sound them 
for wisdom, inspiration, and peace, we find that 
we are sounding in God. When we seek a God 
beyond humanity, we are pursuing an illusion, we 
are chasing a shadow ; when we turn to God in 
humanity, we find the Eternal help at our door. 



THE UPPER ROOM 287 

The upper room stands at the heart of the 
New Testament. It is touched with an abiding 
and an inexpressible sanetity. It is involved with 
the highest thoughts, the loftiest feelings, the 
most exalted fellowships, and the divinest hopes. 
It is the sanetnary of the world's greatest faith; 
it is the centre of the world's profoundest sor- 
row and hope. It is only a symbol, but it is a 
symbol for the whole range of what is highest 
and best in faith and in life. 

The upper room is first of all associated with 
Christ. There with his disciples he for the last 
time kept the Passover and turned that feast 
into the Lord's Supper. It is the sign of the sub- 
limity of his teaching and spirit. There is the 
association of which the text speaks, the associ- 
ation between the upper room and the disciples. 
It is the token of the exaltation of purpose, expe- 
rience, service, and fellowship to which they had 
been lifted. To these two, which in a sense cover 
everything, a third must be added. There was 
the upper room in which Dorcas, that dear friend 
of the poor, was laid after death, in which she was 
restored to life. It is the emblem of the world to 
which we raise the beloved and venerated dead, 
in which they come back to us with living power. 

1. The sublimity of Christ is the fundamental 
and growing insight of all true readers of the 
New Testament. Great is the thought of God 



288 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

which the last and greatest of Greek philosophers 
gave to the world. To have heen able to sum up 
the universe in a Divine Thinker for whom all 
things exist, and who is infinitely above all things, 
was a great achievement. And yet the thought 
of God entertained by Greek philosophy at its 
best is far below the conception of God found in 
the prophets and psalmists of Israel. To have 
conceived of God as the Righteous Ruler of the 
world, inviting men into communion with his 
life, and compassionating the weak and sinful 
as a father pities his children, was a wondrous 
advance upon all preceding forms of faith. Into 
these old words Jesus put new worlds of meaning. 
Think what Jesus meant by righteousness, by 
pity, by fatherhood. Personality, love, compas- 
sion, the reign of righteousness, meant infinitely 
more for Jesus than for all other teachers. He 
often uses the words that they use, but his 
thought, his transcendent vision, is his own. The 
child uses the word love ; it is a beautiful word, 
and carries a beautiful meaning upon its tongue. 
The mother uses the same word, but does it not 
stand for a vaster and holier world ? In 1856 
there were boys in England who used the word 
brave, and they put sincere passion into it; but 
what comparison is there between their use of 
the word and that of the men who made the 
charge of the Light Brigade ? The Lord's Prayer 



THE UPPER ROOM 289 

on the lips of ( 'arlyle, when aohild by his mother's 
side, in Ecolefechan, and the Lord's Prayer upon 
the lips of the lonely old man awaiting death in 
London fourscore years afterwards, are surely 
infinitely different. The question is, after all, 
mi.' of meaning and not of words. Originality 
does not lie in phraseology, but in insight. The 
subjects of human thought were old even when 
Christ came. His originality lies where all true 
originality must ever lie, in the depth, the ade- 
quacy, the finality of the meaning which he put 
into the old words. lie took the old words about 
God and the kingdom of God, about the soul 
and sin and righteousness, about forgiveness 
and service and life after death, and he filled 
them with a new and heavenly content. It is 
the same old table round which he gathers men, 
but the bread is now the bread of heaven. It 
is the same cup that he passes to his disciples, 
but it is now running over with the water of 
life. One man shows us a real, but poor, pic- 
ture of Niagara, and we are thankful for that. 
Another with wondrous gift of speech describes 
the stupendous thing : and we add this to the pic- 
ture ami feel that we have gained much. Still 
another takes us to see the cataract itself. That 
is the supreme service. Greek philosophy is the 
picture real but imperfect, Hebrew prophecy is 
the inspired description, Jesus Christ is the im- 



290 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

mediate, awestruck, and overwhelming vision of 
God. 

But the sublimity of the teaching is less 
impressive than the sublimity of the character 
of Jesus. Thought is always easier than action, 
and therefore the perfect will is higher than the 
perfect vision. And no one can think of the 
upper room without thinking of the exaltation 
of the life that first conferred all its meaning 
upon that place. The wonder of its beginning, 
the one beautiful vision that we have of it in 
boyhood, the silence of its youth about which we 
can only dream, the last and greatest epoch in 
human history introduced on the day that Christ 
began his public ministry, the union in that 
ministry of an unspeakable service to the bodies 
and the minds and the souls of the multitudes 
who followed him, the revelation which he made 
at every step forward, not only of the glory of 
his intelligence, but also of the heights of his 
character, the revolution in faith, in ideals, in 
obligations, and in conduct that he inaugurated, 
the enmity that he encountered, the infamy to 
which he was subjected, the suffering as the per- 
fect servant of God and man which he endured, 
are the great chapters that tell of the sublimity 
of the Founder of Christianity. The upper room 
stands for the sublime teaching and, yet more, 
for the sublime soul of Christ. Look upon him 



THE UPPER ROOM 291 

at that last supper, and behold in his face and 
speech and spirit and manner the highest in 
human history. The first thing in our thought 
to-day is the sublimity of the Master who brings 
us to God that he may bring us to ourselves. 
The upper room tells first of all of the teaching 
that is the perfection of the world's faith about 
God and about man, and of the life that is 
wholly from above. 

2. The second great meaning of the upper 
room is the inspiration of the disciples. They 
doubtless (bought, as they gathered there, of the 
former gathering with their Master. The apos- 
tolic upper room took on depth and tenderness 
from the upper room of Christ, to which it an- 
swered. The first stood for the solitary glory of 
their Master; the second stood for the power of 
that Master out of the unseen over their souls. 

Inspiration, that is the first great meaning 
of Pentecost. There came upon the Apostles 
through their faith and their fellowship and 
their prayer a flood of new power. New and 
wondrous insights into the meaning of Christ's 
mission came flocking in upon them like winged 
messengers from heaven, new appreciations of 
all that they had seen their Master do, of all 
that they had heard him speak, of all that they 
had beheld him endure. A whole world of 
interpretation rose upon them through their 



292 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

thought and their worship, an interpretation of 
the career of Jesus Christ. And in closest 
union with this new and wondrous insight was 
intense and holy passion. The heavenly vision 
had come to them, and the power to follow it 
thrilled their whole existence. Out of this in- 
spiration, an inspiration that involved both a 
heavenly vision and a heavenly passion, came 
the entire service, character, and power of their 
lives. The upper room was to the disciples the 
sign of a new and permanent inspiration, an 
inspiration that gradually changed all their 
thoughts, that slowly shaped all their feelings, 
that ultimately controlled their whole being and 
hope. 

Have we no upper room ? Did the first disci- 
ples alone possess this correspondence with the 
Master? Are his inspirations spent? Is there 
no place where we can gather, where we can 
open our whole being to the Highest, where 
through sincere penitence and honest prayer and 
brotherly fellowship and devout and reverent 
worship we may receive power from above ? 

Surely we need this inspiration from on high. 
AH our instincts, all our feelings, all our powers, 
and all our opportunities may be taken hold of 
in either of two ways. We may run the higher 
down into the lower, or we may lift and transfig- 
ure the lower by the higher. Are not the noblest 



THE UPPER ROOM 293 

among us the most deeply conscious that they 
are not dealing honorably by their life? How 
painfully conscious the best parents are of the 

foot that they have never yet risen to the upper 
ranges of parenthood ! How profoundly true this 
is of noble friends, noble lovers, noble business 
men, noble citizens ! We are living in relation- 
ships in which (iod has placed us ; his purpose ap- 
pears to us in these relationships as a mountain 
which we have never yet had strength to climb ; 
and yet we know that until we do stand upon the 
summit of this mountain of the Lord, we shall 
never behold God's world as it is, we shall never 
be able to rejoice before God as we should. 

Here is our terrible peril. For want of inspi- 
ration, for want of courage and strength, we miss 
the best in our life. We fail to rise, we sink. 
We take low visions of our own nature, low views 
of the order of relations in which men live, low 
views of our privileges, our joys, our opportuni- 
ties and obligations. The highest and best use 
of life eludes us, we take our entire existence by 
the under side. Everywhere you see men missing 
the rich and high possibility. The capitalist lets 
humanity slip from his mastership, the laborer 
lets high-mindeclness go from his service, the 
friend loses disinterestedness from his friendship, 
the lover allows honor and chivalry to fly from his 
love, the father fails to keep the awe and the joy 



294 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

with which God filled his heart when he made 
him a father, the son drops from his sonhood the 
high respect that made it great, the citizen has 
consented to become conformed to the standard 
of the self-seeking politician. There is the sad 
story. The fall of Adam may be a myth ; the 
fall of his descendants is the deepest and saddest 
thing in human experience. That old garden 
story with which the Bible opens has an ever- 
lasting symbolic value. It tells the story of the 
race through its story about the first man and 
woman. The high possibility was allowed to 
go ; life was not taken to the loftiest level. The 
business of existence was permitted to drop, and 
all its interests lost their character, their influ- 
ence, their power and joy. That is our life. We 
are unequal to life's highest possibility. It is 
capable of infinitely better things than we have 
done with it. It has ranges of truth and honor 
and love and joy that we have hardly seen, and 
upon which we have never set our dominion. 

Here is our need of inspiration, the inspira- 
tion of the Holy Ghost. Here is the significance 
of our weekly gatherings in this place. We are 
here in fellowship, we are here to give thanks, 
to speak our inmost thought and want to the In- 
finite, to join in the worship that man may offer 
to the Eternal Father. We come here under the 
sense of the momentousness of living, sure that 



THE UPPER ROOM 295 

this 18 a great universe in the bosom of which we 
are gathered, Burmising at least that there is 
a hidden dignity in our souls, and somewhere, 
awaiting our discovery, a grandeur about our op- 
portunities. Under this burdening sense of the 
greatness of life, with this confident guess about 
the possible worth of existence, with the sublime 
surmise that the universe may at any hour be- 
et >me for us a manifestation of Infinite Love, or 
with the desperate hope that all things may prove 
altogether better than our fears, we gather here. 
We look for insight and for passion. We need 
to see our path and to love it. The flood of light 
and the flood of love ; for these we wait in this 
upper room. And as of old, the sanctuary is 
still one of the places where men are lifted above 
their low views, their tormenting doubts, their 
terrible fears, their unspoken blasphemies against 
the Highest. There men still see the horror of 
wickedness, and the truth and peace of a good life. 
Insight and enthusiasm, — these are our needs. 
Life must become great in the discovery that it 
was made to be the servant of the righteous God. 
The routine of our days, the dull task, the unro- 
mantic duty, the prosaic fellowship, the whole 
order of existence from which all novelty, or even 
the hope of it, has long since fled, shines in won- 
drous light when with open eyes we look into the 
heart of God's law. Then there come together 



296 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

two surprises, the surprise that what has been 
given us to do is so great, and the surprise that 
our hearts answer this call with fullness of power. 
Think of some wondrous singer, a Jenny Lind, 
singing the same piece over and over again till 
through wearing repetition it has shrunken to a 
petty thing, all at once, on some bright morning, 
upon taking the first notes of the really great 
song, as by a flash of light seeing into the heart 
of its greatness. What happens? Instantly 
the voice greatens to the greatness of the task. 
The new insight awakens the new passion, and 
calls forth the new power. Range after range of 
voice reveals itself, new capacities rise up out of 
the depths and sing out of the heights. The 
inspired instrument runs up and down the scale 
like angel feet upon the ladders that reach from 
earth to heaven. The singer, lost in the sense of 
the greatness of the song, is amazed at the com- 
pass, the character, the fire and power of her own 
voice. She found God in the piece, and she is 
overawed as she looks inward to find God in her 
own power. That is the surprise of life. While 
we wait in the upper room, while we wait in 
prayer and fellowship, the great light comes. 
The poor petty task looms up into unspeakable 
greatness, and while we look on it in wonder and 
delight, the great answer forms itself in our 
hearts. As we take up the old song of existence 



THE UPPER BOOM 297 

in this new revelation of its transcendent mean- 
ing, the great inward surprise comes. New con- 
centrations of mind, new comprehensions issuing 
in high and settled wisdom, new depths of love 
and strength of purpose and power of execution, 
amaze the soul. In finding God in our duty, we 
discover God in the range and richness and 
mastery of our own powers. In the upper room 
aw wait for the inspiration of the spirit of God. 

3. And up into that sanctuary we should 
carry our dead. The Dorcas story has a won- 
derful hint in it for all who stand in the great 
succession of sorrow. In the upper room the 
dead was laid, in the upper room the dead came 
back to life. I believe that if we carry our dead 
to the highest in our nature, they will assuredly 
live again for us in ever richer power. 

Where shall we lay our dead ? Shall we put 
them as soon as we can in the dark chamber of 
f orgetf ulness ? Shall we lower them into the 
dungeon of doubt ? Shall we retain them in the 
room of regret and grief, that we may forever 
cover them with our tears? Surely our noble 
dead, they who have fought the good fight, 
deserve something better at our hands. Let us 
show our immortal honor for them by carrying 
them to the highest within our souls, and there 
in the uppermost room of peaceful faith in God, 
in sweet reconciliation to his will, in devoutest 



298 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

thankfulness and in dearest remembrance of the 
good that they have done us, let us lay them 
there. In highest honor and gratitude and hope, 
let them forever rest. They deserve to rest there. 
And while they seem dead, while the absent apos- 
tle tarries, and they look as if they had bidden 
us an eternal farewell, they will still fill the 
whole of that life in whose highest venerations 
they are laid with the peace of God. 

" Let us begin and carry up this corpse, 

Singing together. 
Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop, 

Seek we sepulture 
On a tall mountain, citied to the top, 

Crowded with culture ! 
Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights: 

Wait ye the warning ? 
Our low life was the level's and the night's, 

He 's for the morning. 
Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head, 

'Ware the beholders; 
This is our Master, famous, calm and dead, 

Borne on our shoulders. 
Here 's the top-peak, the multitude below 

Live, for they can there : 
This man decided not to live but know — 

Bury this- man there? 
Here — here 's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form, 

Lightnings are loosened, 
Stars come and go ! Let joy break with the storm, 

Peace let the dew send ! 
Leave him — still loftier than the world suspects, 

Living and dying." 



THE UPPEB ROOM 299 

But this is not the end. In a way so easily 
and grossly caricatured the dead do return to 
life. They come back in wisdom, in love, in all 
high faith and deep feeling. They come back in 
power. The dead fathers and mothers of the 
world, through the pious and Loving memory and 
imagination of their children, still do much to 
guide and bless the world. Any soul that one 
has ever really known, any spirit from whom one 
has really drawn wisdom and courage for the 
struggle of life, cannot be taken away by death. 
We miss the touch of a vanished hand, and the 
sound of a voice that is still, but upon the heart 
the hand is mightier, upon the soul the voice is 
deeper. Nothing is more true, nothing is more 
a part of the higher life of mankind, than this 
increase of power after death of those who have 
been revered and loved upon those who have 
revered and loved them. Our Lord told his dis- 
ciples that it was expedient for them that he 
should go away. They did not, they could not 
believe it. But before they came to the end of 
life, they felt the truth of his words. The nnseen 
Christ was the mightier Christ. The disciples 
laid their Lord in their highest veneration, in 
their most thankful love, and he returned to 
them, and filled their lives with the tokens of 
his power. This is the law of the kingdom 
of God. We live out of the invisible. When we 



300 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

are at our best, the unseen God, the unseen 
Christ, the unseen dead whom we dearly love 
and gratefully remember, are a part of our exist- 
ence. If power is the final test of reality, our 
dead are most real, they are at our side in the 
great spiritual communion in which we stand. 

I have spoken as if there were three upper 
rooms, that of the divine Christ, that of the 
inspired disciple, that of heavenly sorrow and 
resurrection. The three are really one. Christ 
is in the first; that is plain. He is in the sec- 
ond, for the inspiration is from him. And he is 
in the third, for in his name the dead Dorcas was 
restored to life. He is in the third, for without 
him, — his teaching, his personal triumph over 
death, his power over the soul, his representative 
value Godward and man ward, — sorrow cannot 
be lifted to the eternal light and transfigured 
there ; without him our dead cannot live again 
for us. The three are one, and that one upper 
room is a possibility in every life. 

The upper room is indeed part of the consti- 
tution of our human nature. It is assumed as 
real for man in the great appeal, " Seek the 
things that are above." It is the great basal 
assumption of all religion. It is indeed here 
that Christianity is strongest. It reveals the 
heights in man's soul, and it calls him up on to 
the heights. It fills him with two great con vie- 



the urrER ROOM 301 

tions : first, that it is possible for him to become 
a good man ; and, second, that he is able so to 
govern the trials of his existence in this world as 
to make them issue in strength and richness of 
heart. Christianity is first revelation and second 
deliverance. The revelation becomes deliverance. 
The upper room is shown, and then begins its 
endless appeal. 

Christianity as revelation is to-day accepted 
among all serious minds. It is the best account 
that we have of man and man's interests. It 
brings into view more of man and more of the 
better man than any other teaching. As the 
intellectual valuation of human existence, Chris- 
tianity is supreme and without a rival. Our 
best thinking in all spheres of the humanities 
is but the new adaptation of the fundamental 
ideas in the teaching of Jesus. In the face of 
the entire revolution of opinion concerning the 
Bible, wrought chiefly by historical criticism, it 
is still true that Christianity as revelation, as 
the final account of man and man's interests, 
has won the serious judgment of the world. 

Where is the deliverance? Where is the deliv- 
erance from the weakness of the will, from the 
disease of the intellect, from the baseness of the 
heart? We seem to have the vision, and still 
we are without the power ! And we ask why it 
is that the revelation which at once became 



302 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

deliverance in the days of Jesus and his Apostles 
with us remains revelation and nothing more. 
We believe, we entertain the vision, and we are 
still in our sins. 

What is the source of this woe ? Insincerity, 
that deadliest enemy of man, secret, subtle, per- 
vasive insincerity. Our Christianity lies outside 
of us, like food on the table which we see, but 
which we have not yet eaten. Our vision is of a 
foreign substance ; we are playing at believing. 
We build ourselves into compartments ; the in- 
tellect is one compartment, the heart is another, 
the will yet another. We open the intellect to the 
Christian vision ; occasionally we expose feeling 
to the Christian appeal; the will we protect 
against the Christian law, we reserve it for the 
selfish and base uses of life. Here is our trouble. 
We let the light into the front room of our 
dwelling ; we bar the door against its advance 
upon the bed of the sleeper. Light opens closed 
eyes ; light rushes through opened eyes in upon 
the brain, rousing into action every organ in the 
body, and setting the man upon his feet. Unless 
it is checked, Christianity as vision becomes inev- 
itably Christianity as action. Unless we bar its 
path, Christianity as light rushes through the 
intellect, through the feelings, on into the will. 
Unless we divert it, Christianity as faith issues 
in Christianity as works. If we believe, and 



THE UPPBB ROOM 303 

still are held in the gall of bitterness and in the 
bond of iniquity, we may be sure that there is 
in us some deadly insincerity. It is this that is 
holding us down. It is this inward, subtle dis- 
honesty that is depriving us of the whole mighty 
practical blessing of the gospel. Deliverance is 
tlie last and greatest aspect of our faith, the 
deliverance of them that are bound. Freedom 
is the deepest cry of the human spirit, freedom 
is the sovereign blessedness of the human soul. 
" Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall 
make you free," but there must be no compart- 
ments in the life of the knower, the tide of truth 
from the Eternal must be allowed to sweep into 
the inmost recess of the personal will. 

I have said that the upper room is part of the 
constitution of human nature. It is sad to reflect 
that in multitudes it is a vacant room. There is 
no Christ in it, no inspiration, no sacred sorrow, 
no resurrection. This is the deepest tragedy in 
the world, that the highest in man is in disuse. 
Where is that vacant guest-chamber ? The Mas- 
ter desires to keep the Passover there in your 
soul, and in that upper room of your nature 
reveal the sublimity of his nature and love. 
There he desires that you should abide. Live on 
the heights. There through the prayer, and the 
human fellowship, and the ineffable communion, 
wait for the coming of the great inspiration. 



304 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

And there lie directs that you should carry your 
dead. Lay them in your highest faith, in your 
loftiest veneration and dearest love. Be sure 
your sorrow will then become a heavenly sorrow, 
and your dead will return to you in the power 
of an endless life. 



XVII 
GOD THE COMFORTER 

M I will pray the Father, an*l lie shall give you another Comforter, that 
he may be with you for ever." 

John xiv, 1G. 

Wonder and awe are among the earliest re- 
sponses of the soul to the appeal of the Infinite ; 
they remain among the latest. We have seen in 
the dear and happy eyes of a child just begin- 
ning to note here and there some great feature 
of our strange world, the sense of fascination 
and mystery as it looked up into the infinite 
spaces ; and we have seen in the dim and sorrow- 
ful vision of age the image of the same feeling. 
The thing that forever fascinates and baffles, 
that draws us on to inquire into it, and that 
covers us with the shadow of a vast dread, is 
this solemn, beautiful, mysterious universe. We 
wrestle with it in the darkness, we call to it, 
" Tell me thy name ; " the morning comes, the 
mystery with which we have wrestled eludes us, 
and we are left blessed, it may be, but bruised. 
The manna in the wilderness was not understood ; 
its name was a question. What is it? — that 
was the cry of the people as they beheld this 
desert wonder. They could not account for it, 



306 THROUGH MAN TO GOB 

it remained an enigma ; therefore they named it, 
What is it? If we consult our sincerest and 
deepest thoughts about the universe, we shall 
find them mainly interrogations. The sum of 
things in heaven above and on earth beneath, 
other than man, the total life of the race in the 
present and in the past, and the power by which 
this wondrous whole is pervaded, we call the 
universe, and the inmost meaning of the name 
is, What is it ? Like the manna, it is sweet and 
it supports life ; but the final and full account 
of it we are unable to give. The first act of 
worship, the act that includes all serious and 
noble men, is the worship of the Inscrutable. 

This mood, however, does not remain unfruit- 
ful. Men investigate and think ; they live and 
reach conclusions ; they come to look at the uni- 
verse in a great variety of ways. To one man it 
seems at heart matter ; all thought, all feeling, 
and all character are incidental ; the substance 
of the universe is physical, it is an ever changing 
physical show, with here and there a strain of 
thought and feeling, like the band that now 
and then plays in the grim hour of battle. To 
another it is force ; to still another law ; to yet 
another fate. The force is there, its ways are 
fixed, and it is operated by a necessity blind, 
dumb, eternal. 

In contrast with all this, in the text the uni- 



GOD THE COMFORTER 307 

verse is said to be, at its heart, mind; it is 
assumed to be personal, it is named the Com- 
forter. This is the Christian way of looking at 
the universe. 

1. First of all there is the audacity of this 
interpretation. In the face of all disorder, all 
silence, all apparent indifference to man, all 
pain, all loss, all death, the universe is gathered 
into the Infinite Comforter ! Could there be a 
more audacious conception than that ? Is it not 
as if one were to look for pity from the tempest, 
or sympathy from the cold and speechless stars? 
Is it not as if one should regard the wild and 
angry sea as a friend, and the more of a friend 
the wilder and the angrier it is? Is not the uni- 
verse essentially hostile? Its boundlessness, its 
mystery, its silence, and its settled disdain, are 
these the tokens of its regard ? When men hunt 
the wild beast, or go among savage tribes, or ven- 
ture among unfriendly forces, they go armed ; 
they do not expect mercy from a tiger, sympathy 
from a Hottentot, consideration from a cannibal. 
When the California gold was first carried from 
the mines, the bearer was preceded and followed 
by a soldier, rifle in hand; the environment 
was hostile, the guarded treasure alone was safe. 
Should we not imitate this procedure ? Should 
we not fortify ourselves against our enemies ; 
build towers like that of the men of Babel, only 



308 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

stronger ; proceed on the supposition that our 
human treasure is under constant menace, that 
the eye of an infinite robber is upon us, and 
that there is no security except in the vigilant 
and militant arm? 

Look at the situation. We are born in ut- 
most frailty. If left to the tender mercy of the 
woods, the winds, the seasons, the wild beasts, 
if abandoned to the sympathy of nature, we 
should perish in a day. The homes into which 
we were born were built to shield us from the 
angry cosmos ; clothing is prepared for us as 
a further protection. Our liability to sickness 
means that our frail life is beset with countless 
enemies. The climate is too severe, or the air is 
foul with the germs of disease, or the water that 
we drink holds death in solution, or the foods 
that we eat conceal the life that means pain to 
us and perhaps destruction. What is civiliza- 
tion but the strenuous, eonian effort to overcome 
the hostility of nature, to mitigate her antago- 
nism, to crowd her back from our properly hu- 
man domain, to pile up the instruments and the 
material resources whereby we can reduce her 
power to work us harm, whereby we can repair 
the unpreventable injuries which she inflicts 
upon man! What is civilization but the glori- 
ous record of man's victory over the unrelent- 
ing enmity of the cosmos ! What is our whole 



GOD THE COMFORTER 309 

achievement inside the hounds of nature hut the 
confession that nature is never enough, that she 
is never wholly to be trusted, that we can never 
safely meet her except with our harness on our 
backs 1 The Hollander lias rescued his country 
from the sea ; he holds it in defiance of the sea, 
and the thunder of its tides against the walls 
that he has built reminds him that his enemy is 
still close at hand, and wild with greed to invade 
and recover. Such seems our human world, a 
domain snatched from infinite hostility, held by 
high device and amazing stratagem against the 
never ceasing attack of the cosmos, a world of 
justice and love encircled by a boundless waste 
of wild, implacable enmity. While the race 
holds this domain in defiance of the cosmos, the 
individual loses ; generations of individuals per- 
ish, and the end would seem to be the defeat 
not of the cosmos, but of man. Even Gibraltar 
could not stand out forever ; even that fortress 
could be starved into surrender. Is not our 
human world a sort of mighty fortress under 
siege at the hands of the universe ? We are 
many, we have learned the methods of cosmical 
attack, we are well provisioned and at present 
comparatively secure ; but what hope is there 
in the endless contest that we shall be victo- 
rious ? Is not our enemy too much for us ? In 
view of all this, is it not an audacious thing 



310 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

to regard the universe as at heart the Infinite 
comfort ? 

In reply to this it should be said that there is 
nature and there is human nature. And the uni- 
verse that is revealed in nature as against us is 
revealed in human nature as on our side. God is 
against us, in part at least, in nature ; He is for 
us, in part at least, in human nature. It is He 
who has taught our hands to war in our campaign 
against nature ; it is from Him that the spirit 
of insight, discovery, use, and power has come. 
And this outward antagonism may be but inspi- 
ration to the inward friendliness; even as the 
eagle, whose eagle nature is in her brood, stirs up 
the nest under them, breaks it to pieces, that the 
royal spirit in them may leave the earth for the 
sky. The Infinite is in the pure air, the favoring 
seasons, the fruitful earth, the amenableness of 
nature to cultivation, the elasticity with which it 
may be turned to human uses ; the Infinite is in 
the biting wind, the wild sea, the malarial swamp, 
the polluted well, the germs of disease, the black 
wings of death as they beat about us, to rouse, 
to educate, to force man back upon himself, to 
compel him to seek the society of his kind, to 
drive him in upon the resources of the soul ; and 
the Infinite is in man in his expansive and mar- 
velous intelligence, in his capacities for love and 
sympathy, in his conscience and its law of right- 



GOD THE COMFORTER 311 

eousness, in liis will and its power to subdue the 
wild cosmos, in its power to incarnate in human 
society the vision of the City of God. God in 
nature is both against us and for us ; God in 
man is both against us and for us ; and the vast, 
ceaseless antipathy is in the interest of the still 
vaster and sublimer sympathy. It is therefore a 
reasonable audacity that claims the universe as 
the Comforter of man. 

2. In this conception of the universe as at heart 
a universe of comfort lies much of the power of 
Christianity. Christianity is indeed the religion 
of the morally victorious soul; it is in an em- 
phatic sense the religion of righteousness. It calls 
for the new heaven and the new earth ; it gives 
the vision of the righteous God, and it lays upon 
those who entertain this vision the obligation 
to reform human society. The call to serve, to 
achieve, is the trumpet call of the gospel. Chris- 
tianity has the utmost fascination for the morally 
capable, for all those who are conscious of achiev- 
ing power, who exult in the sense of a sound and 
an aspiring humanity, whose reforming instinct 
rises to passion, and who delight in life because 
it holds within itself the energy that would re- 
new the world. 

We must never forget that religion has always 
begun here. The religion of Moses was a religion 
of righteousness. Here was his race in bondage, 



312 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

that bondage was an outrage upon their human- 
ity, an injustice that cried to heaven. The reli- 
gion of Moses began in the vision of the righteous 
God and in the passion for reform under that 
vision. Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, every great 
soul in the history of Israel, followed in the 
footsteps of Moses. John the Baptist, when he 
came, repeated the same sublime experience ; re- 
ligion was the vision of the righteous God, and 
the obligation under that vision to renew the 
world. Christianity is here only another and 
a vaster version of the same thing ; its initial 
words are : " Seek first God's kingdom and his 
righteousness." The sublimity of its vision of 
God made obsolete the earlier visions ; it fasci- 
nated the elect youth of the time of Jesus ; it 
fascinated Stephen and Paul ; it has exercised 
a resistless charm over the highest spirits in 
every succeeding generation. Christianity is first 
of all an appeal to the morally fit. 

It is more. It is an appeal to the morally 
unfit. It is the religion of reconciliation. It finds 
man with a vision of the better life and with an 
incapacity for obedience. It finds him like the 
eaglet, with eyes for the free heaven, but with 
no wings to lift it thither ; it finds him like 
the paralytic, with the vision of the ideal, but 
without the power of attainment. Here it revolu- 
tionized the life of Paul; it gave him a sublimer 



GOD THE COMFORTER 313 

vision, and it gave him a power of achievement 
wholly new. And from that day to this Chris- 
tianity has gone on its way imparting vision to 
the blind, and creating power in the heart of 
moral paralysis and despair. The spring comes 
and the frozen earth is free ; the spring comes 
and the meadow, ugly with its burden of dead 
grass, blooms again ; the spring is here and 
every blackened tree with its leafless boughs is 
covered with life and beauty; the spring is here 
and the face of the world is lifted into accord 
with the vision of loveliness. So Christianity 
works. It goes like a great tide of life ; it re- 
news the fountains of human nature, opens the 
springs of moral power in man's heart, puts crea- 
tive might in the soul, moves a despairing human- 
ity into song. It is the religion of reconciliation. 

It is more. It is the religion of comfort. There 
is surely comfort in the vision of the righteous 
God and the passion for reform set free in human 
hearts under that vision. There is indeed comfort 
in the wonderful experience whereby despairing 
men are made capable of the noblest life, whereby 
the sinful and erring are filled with moral hope 
and charged with moral power. Christianity as 
the religion of comfort does not exhaust itself 
in these great inspirations. Man has needs as a 
suffering being, as a lover and as a loser. 

One of the profoundest of all human necessi- 



314 THEOUGH MAN TO GOB 

ties concerns the treasure of the loving heart. 
The fortunate human being has made a vast 
investment of himself in other human beings ; 
he is a lover, it may be an intense, a devoted, 
and a grateful lover. The treasure of life is 
not money, it is not fame, it is not power, it 
is love ; and whether it is the child's life in the 
life of its parents, or the life of the parents in 
the life of their children, the consciousness of a 
divine possession under fearful menace is at 
times the acutest of all pains. The call of the 
heart is for protection. The need of the heart is 
protection. Can you trust your child to wander 
unprotected in the jungle? Can you live with 
the sense of the dear lives in whom you have 
invested your soul under a menace unmitigated, 
a peril between which and them there is no 
shield ? Can you live in peace without the con- 
sciousness that the Giver of life is the Protector 
of it, without the faith that the heart's greatest 
interests are God's greatest interests, without 
the assurance that all things work together for 
good to them that love God? 

Christianity comes, then, with its message of 
comfort to man the lover ; it assures him that 
what is dear to him is infinitely dear to God. 
The father whom you revere, the mother whom 
you honor, the child to whom the whole tender- 
ness of your soul goes out, the friend whom you 



COD THE COMFORTER 315 

count part of yourself, the many noble fellow ser- 
vants in whom you have allowed yourself to make 
a permanent investment of affection, — for all 
these there is a cover in the Eternal Lover, for 
all these there is a refuge in the Eternal Friend. 
How beautiful is that Old Testament concep- 
tion of the City of Refuge ! Thither in their 
error and misfortune and weakness men could 
fly ; once there, they were safe from the pursuer. 
According to Christian faith, such a city of 
refuge is our God. Thither in all ages loving 
souls have gone ; inside its golden gates they 
have laid the precious burden of their hearts. 
Thither the young have gone in moments of 
extreme anxiety, weeping and wondering whether 
the horror was to be theirs of the untimely loss 
of father and mother, and there they have 
found rest. Fathers and mothers looking upon 
their children in health and reading the record 
of the daily work of death, looking upon their 
children in sickness and watching the curtain 
trembling between them and the unseen, have 
gone up into that city of comfort and there have 
entered into the infinite peace. When households 
have been sundered by the cruel hand of fate, 
when brothers and sisters have been driven to 
the ends of the earth, the old mother, left to 
think of her brood wide apart as east and west, 
has gone for comfort to the infinite sheltering 



316 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

presence of God. In the shadow of his wings 
there is peace. 

Christianity is first of all the religion of lovers. 
It is the religion for those who feel the precious- 
ness of existence ; it has been to all who love an 
infinite comfort. It was so while Jesus lived. He 
early made his religion the religion of home ; he 
put it to the service of anxious and deep-hearted 
parents ; he poured it as comfort into the souls 
of the troubled and the loving men and women 
of his time. What he did for those whose trea- 
sure was love, and whose love was under menace, 
cannot be told. It was a service immeasurable in 
amount, and inconceivably precious. Since Jesus 
lived, parenthood and love have been easier. The 
life of the lover, if there be no infinite comfort, 
is of all lives the most tragic. The most awful 
of all relations is that of parent in a universe 
without love and sympathy. In a universe where 
this is not clear, where it is not sure, where 
it is only a dim guess, a pale and fitful hope, 
surely the fate of the lover is hard. To receive 
from the universe the supreme gift, the gift of 
a great, disinterested, undying love, and not to 
be able to believe that the universe has for the 
human heart thus visited any sympathy, any 
refuge, must appear in moments of vivid feeling 
an appalling condition. Could there be for the 
human parent a worse fate than that pictured in 



GOD THE COMFORTER 317 

Niobe ! That story of the mother and her chil- 
dren in a universe not only unsympathetic but 
cruel, is to me the most awful in the annals 
of the race. Love and parenthood in such a 
universe are the supreme calamity ; there is no 
place for them, they are too good for the brutal 
world. Under ideas like these millions of our 
fellow men have suffered; to such suffering mil- 
lions the gospel of the eternal comfort came; 
the family life of Christendom became a new 
thing, parenthood and love became the supreme 
human privilege, and God offered himself as 
the city of refuge for all anxious, loving souls. 

Man is not only a lover; he is also a loser. 
Death conies, and the souls that are as parts 
of one organism are torn asunder. Death is the 
great desolator. It is still the king of terrors, 
the supreme horror of all who love. Its ravages 
cannot be averted. Men are born to love, and 
they are born to die. In this order of birth 
and love and death and loss the generations of 
men move. What comes but hopeless grief, 
absolute despair, when this order is unillumined 
out of the Eternal ? What religion is possible 
other than the religion of pity in the presence of 
the infinite tragedy in human history ? If the 
sentence, " Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt 
thou return," covers the whole man, what can 
virtue do with the life of a worm or a fly ? If men 



318 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

in their grief count for nothing to the Eternal, 
existence is misery, the supreme calamity is to 
be born, the supreme sin is parenthood. If this 
life is all, it is not worth having ; it is a calam- 
ity to all who love while they live. If this life is 
all, those who continue the succession of births 
are the most reckless and heartless among human 
beings. How can they be unmindful of the ten- 
der hearts of those whom they bring into being ! 
How can they live regardless of the woe to which 
they introduce helpless souls ! 

Christianity comes to the lover who is a loser 
with its vision of the Infinite Father and his 
house of many mansions. Thither go the dear 
dead fathers and mothers ; thither go the youth 
slain in the service of the race, run down by the 
awful car of human civilization ; and thither 
go the bands of little children, — look up and 
see them dressed not in swaddling-bands, but in 
singing-robes. The child choir in heaven is the 
only part of earth's music translated from this 
world to the heavenly that even the angelic songs 
cannot match. Look up and listen. That is 
the vision that sustains the bewildered mind of 
sorrowing parenthood ; that is the music that 
finally makes the grief of fathers and mothers 
an infinite solace. 

Christianity is kept in the world by the re- 
former ; it is kept in the world by those who 



GOD THE COMFORTER 319 

seek escape from the hell of their sins and weak- 
nesses ; but more than all, it is kept in the world 
by loving men and women who know that life 
has in it infinite treasure, and among these the 
lovers who have lost, hold with the strongest hand 
the gospel of the Eternal Comforter. 

3. This great faith is offered to experience. 
It submits itself to the process of proof in the 
course of experience. We are called upon to 
put to the test this conception of the infinite 
com tort ; we are to test it nobly, deeply, to the 
end, in the whole endeavor of existence ; we are 
to accept it as an ideal for the regulation of 
existence ; we are to receive it as a faith to be 
verified in the history of the soul, in the history 
of all believing souls. 

We believe that we may know ; that is the 
fundamental mood of the intelligent disciple of 
Christ. It was not at the beginning, it was at 
the end of his career that Paul said, "I know 
him whom I have believed." His life had begun 
with the acceptance of a vast and precious faith ; 
his whole career had been a process of experi- 
mentation, whereby what he received as faith 
had been verified in experience as the truth. 
He began with the belief, he subjected his life 
to his belief, his life thus subjected took on new 
strength and broke like the morning into joy ; he 
ended with the belief verified, turned into know- 



320 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

ledge. The method of the Apostle is the method 
of all sound science. Science begins with belief ; 
the great process of observation and experiment 
eliminates false belief, purines and expands 
sound belief, and turns it at last into clear and 
accurate knowledge. If the attitude of the scien- 
tist is sound, the attitude of the disciple of Christ 
is sound. He accepts as faith the idea of the in- 
finite comfort, he gives it a chance to verify its 
truth in the process of human endeavor and 
suffering; if it stands the test of life, it is true. 
It is impossible to imagine any other path to 
certainty. No one can tell in advance whether 
or not food of a certain kind will be found whole- 
some in an individual case ; to settle that, we 
must eat and drink. We use the experience of 
our parents, the advice of our friends, the general 
wisdom of the ages about human foods ; but the 
wholesomeness of a particular food for a particu- 
lar person is not proved until it is eaten. A sur- 
geon cannot say in advance that a critical opera- 
tion will surely be successful ; he may think it 
likely, extremely likely, almost certain, but the 
result alone can banish all doubt. The wisest 
lawyer in the land cannot be sure of winning his 
case; he may believe that all law is on his side, 
that all justice is there ; he may be confident 
and full of hope, but until the judge has delivered 
his opinion, he cannot know. The captain of a 



GOD THE COMFORTER 321 

great steamer is never sure when he leaves 
one port that he will reaeh another. lie knows 
his ship ; he knows the sea. The ship is not 
new ; she has weathered under his command the 
gales of many winters, but this voyage may prove 
her last. The captain does not believe so ; he 
believes that she will trace again her victorious 
path from shore to shore. In that faith he goes 
forth. The faith is so strong that head winds 
do not disturb him, thick fogs do not discour- 
age him, seas beating upon him with the force of 
hurricanes in them do not bring dismay. He is 
a confident and a brave man ; his ship is good, 
and he believes that he can weather the roughest 
gale that ever wind did blow. We admire his 
faith, but we see clearly that he cannot know. 

When the revolutionists founded this country 
on the principle of equality and brotherhood in 
citizenship, they believed that the nation they 
founded would endure ; they believed that the 
minds and hearts of the colonists were prepared 
for it, that there was in them a race fitness for 
self-government, that the conception of a vast 
democracy would more and more command their 
intelligence, root itself in their affections, sup- 
port itself out of the resourceful will of the 
great body of free men. So far, time has proved 
that they were right in their faith. But in ad- 
vance of the test of time, proof is impossible. 



322 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

Jesus said, " Heaven and earth.shall pass away, 
but my word shall not pass away." What proof 
could there be of that statement? Doubtless he 
saw into the souls of men ; doubtless he knew 
the supreme harmony that exists between his 
gospel and the best in man ; but the vision of a 
divine adjustment between his gospel and the 
human heart is not proof that his kingdom or 
his word shall last forever. It has lasted ; it is 
likely to last ; it is nearly sure to last ; all this 
we may say, but that it shall certainly last is a 
proposition that cannot be proved. Time alone 
can determine. 

No one can say with certainty what books 
produced in our generation will find readers in 
the next. The classic is known to after-genera- 
tions ; it is never known to the generation that 
witnessed its production. One might as easily 
say who, if any, among a million children are 
born to fame, as to tell which, if any, among a 
million books are destined to live. No one can 
say what the absorbing interests of the next 
generation will be, or what will be its literary 
tastes, its scientific attitude, its philosophical 
mood, its political ideals, or in what paths its 
highest energies shall move. These are things 
about which we may have beliefs, and the be- 
liefs may have in their favor very high likeli- 
hood ; but certainty is impossible until the next 



GOD THE COMFORTER 323 

generation shall arrive. In liis farewell words 
to his judges Socrates says : "The hour has 
come to go away, I to death and you to life; 
but which of US shall fare the better is hid from 
all save God." That covers the entire life of 
man; in advance of the fact we cannot know ; 
we believe, and we wait for the verification of 
belief. 

Our hearts are in our keeping, but what the 
universe has appointed us, we do not know until 
our years are fully told. The Greek conception of 
Destiny is an abiding coneeption ; we know our 
destiny when we have reached it. The threads 
of existence an; spun, the web of reality is woven 
by hands other than ours ; what is ordained we 
Learn through the courses of life. The silken 
threads, and the bold and beautiful devices of 
those that spin and those that weave, the fine- 
ness and the splendor of the great fabric of 
being, are known alone to the eyes that look 
upon them out of the courses of a great Chris- 
tian experience. With our eyes upon the ever- 
coming thread, the ever-flying and ever-weaving 
shuttle, we may have the best of reasons for 
hope, but we cannot know what the completed 
design will be. 

What does all this mean ? That the proof to 
which our religion of comfort is open is the only 
kind of proof obtainable upon any subject what- 



324 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

soever. It all comes up out of the achieving and 
suffering life of man. A Hebrew psalmist sings : 
" Oh, how love 1 thy law ! " In the wildness of 
youth if some one had told him that in the hap- 
piest life love and law were one, he would have 
regarded the remark as incredible. Law is com- 
pulsion, love is freedom ; how can these unite ? 
There is no logic by which the union can be 
made clear; but life, the courses of experience, 
the hours of bitterness and of hope, the whole 
sweep and discipline of existence, issue in this 
fair conclusion that love and law are one in the 
supremely happy soul. Another Hebrew psalm- 
ist sings : " Thy statutes have been my songs 
in the house of my pilgrimage." Possibly in his 
early and reckless years that statement would 
have seemed to him foolishness. Those musty 
old rules about behavior, those maxims for the 
regulation of thought and feeling and conduct, 
with the mildew of centuries upon them, those 
words that seem but the jargon of persons who 
have outlived their zest for nature and the sj^on- 
taneous life of man among his kind, how can 
they become songs ? Can you make poetry out 
of modern statutes? Can you make diamonds 
out of dust-heaps ? Can you lift into the realm 
of art the vulgar life of vulgar men ? Can you 
transmute into songs the severe compulsions of 
the moral law ? Experience alone can answer 



GOD THE COMFORTER 325 

that question. Experience does answer it. Moral 
law through tin- experience of the dutiful soul 
becomes the subliniest of all human songs, the 
profoundest of all human inspirations. Hear 
Wordsworth : — 

"Stern Lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear 
The Godhead's most benignant grace; 
Nor know we anything so fair 
As is the smile upon thy face: 
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds 
And fragrance in thy footing treads; 
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; 
And the most ancient heavens, through Thee, are 
fresh and strong." 

Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? 
That was the question of Nathaniel when Philip 
said to him, ** We have found the Christ." That 
question any sincere man may put concerning 
all high beliefs about the universe. The uni- 
verse often seems like an infinite Nazareth; it 
is boundless but mean. It seems sterile as the 
desert, and men have suffered so much under the 
sun that they have become profoundly skepti- 
cal, profoundly unbelieving. Can any good thing 
come out of this vast, hollow, empty, mocking 
universe? The reply is the reply of Philip to 
Nathaniel, kW Come and see." Come with honest 
eyes to the great thought of the universe as the 
eternal comfort, come and do its bidding as it 
speaks to you in the teaching, in the example, 



326 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

and in the spirit of Jesus ; take his yoke upon 
you, learn of him, become his disciple, walk in 
the paths of his service, submit to the high 
moral discipline to which he submitted, accept 
his thought of the eternal comfort as your faith, 
live under it, live by it, give it a fair chance to 
prove its truth, open your heart to the highest 
of all human conceptions. It may be that it will 
prove itself the eternal truth. Come and see. 
Accept as faith the eternal comfort ; work as a 
great-hearted servant ; suffer as a believer, and 
open all the windows of your being to the eter- 
nal sympathy. It may be that in life and in 
death you will discover that you are the Lord's. 
The universe is great, life is deep, and things 
are not what they seem. The universe is great, 
and hiding in its heart of mystery, waiting there 
for the fitting human mood, stands the eternal 
comfort. Life is deep. I sometimes think that 
as the sea in its unfathomed depth is to that 
which the greatest ship touches and cleaves, so 
is the abyss of the human heart to the mightiest 
understanding. The understanding at its pro- 
f oundest is shallow compared with the unsounded 
depths of the moral nature of man. When this 
mysterious human soul becomes a servant of 
moral ends, when it walks in reverence and holds 
itself for the coming of the kingdom of love and 
as the refuge of weakness and distress, its own 



GOD Till': COMFORTER 327 

nature begins to reveal its grandeur as the struc- 
ture of the earth rose when the flood began to 
abate. Then man becomes aware of the range 
and mystery of bis being, of the laws and forces 
that live and work within him, of the moral will 
of God articulated in the order of his spirit. 
Then the heart is rilled with awe under the sense 
of the infinite benignity that now and then blows 
through it, sometimes in the soft winds and again 
in the strong gales of high delight. Then the 
human heart becomes a great musical instrument, 
on which at times are played all sweet melodies, 
all heroic strains, through which is given the 
mystic sense of the eternal harmony at the heart 
of God. In the pilgrimage of duty the heart 
breaks into song ; a dutiful and tender human- 
ity becomes inevitably a singing humanity. Woo 
leaves the faithful soul on the wings of glad- 
ness; weeping may endure for a night, but joy 
cometh in the morning. When the heart is thus 
sustained at its task, comforted in its sorrow, 
and drawn out in song, men find it easy to believe 
in the Eternal consoler. In the suffering and 
serving life of good men there are moments 
when the highest faith receives complete attesta- 
tion. So it was with Moses on Horeb ; Isaiah 
in the Temple ; Paul on his way to Damascus ; 
John in Patmos. So it has been with all the true 
and the brave. 



328 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

The great moments of life are few and brief, 
yet by these we are to believe and serve. If the 
fortunate mariner were to count the bright days, 
clear from morning to night, which have come 
to him in his service upon the deep, he would 
find them few compared with those that are dark 
and troubled. He thinks himself happy if no 
day pass without some bright moment at noon 
or at sunset. That is enough ; that one moment, 
that brief glance, is worth all the rest of the 
day. By that he discovers again the order of 
the world and finds his place in the pathless sea. 
Through the moments of insight, of inward tri- 
umph, of reconciliation to the will of the Highest, 
we are to reach the character of the universe, we 
are to assure our hearts. These few supreme mo- 
ments are of more worth than all the long, unin- 
spired years. Then our eyes rest on the infinite 
order of life, on the infinite sanctity of life, on 
the infinite benignity of the universe. By these 
sovereign sunlit moments we are to determine 
what to believe, what to do, what to expect ; by 
them we are to verify our faith in the eternal 
comfort, and hold to our course when the wild sea 
is again blackening under the frowning heaven, 
home to the waiting heart of God. 



XVIII 
TOWARD EVENING 

" It is toward evening, and the day is now far spent." 

Luke xiiv, 29. 

What a great day that had been ! The morning 
had found them in the heaviness of a universal 
sorrow. As the dreadful hours passed, the two 
disciples roused themselves sufficiently to under- 
take the walk to Emmaus. They went slowly, 
for there was solace in the utterance of their sad 
thoughts. A mysterious stranger joined them as 
they journeyed onward. He drew from them the 
complete confession of their confusion and de- 
spair. 1 Ee made their hearts burn with surprise 
and hope by the profoundly beautiful view which 
he took of the cause of their grief . He put his 
new and unexpected thought about the death of 
Jesus into their minds, to the absolute exclusion 
of their own. And when they came to their jour- 
ney's end, it seemed to them that they had been 
walking in a divine dream. They could not 
allow their mysterious fellow traveler to go un- 
invited to their home. Something inexpressibly 
great had taken hold of them, and in the name 
of that they constrained the wondrous stranger, 



330 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

saying, " Abide with us : for it is toward evening, 
and the day is now far spent ; and he went in to 
abide with them." The morning heaviness, the 
walk and the human relief, the divine companion 
and interpretation, the full and mighty answer 
of the heart, the evening with the risen Christ 
standing in its reddening glow and peace, — such 
were the supreme things in that great day. And 
that one great day in the experience of those two 
disciples of Christ sets a type for all the disciples 
of Christ. As was the day, so may be the life. 

1. The morning heaviness was the first thing. 
For the third time those two disciples had awak- 
ened to a world that had no Christ, or only a 
dead Christ, in it. A divine presence had been 
taken out of the world. The loveliness of nature 
seemed to be tarnished, Jerusalem had become 
the city of despair, Israel was again hopeless, 
love and friendship were bereaved of their great 
consecration, and the heart of the individual dis- 
ciple was vacant and disconsolate. Such was the 
tragedy under which those two disciples awak- 
ened on the morning of that eventful day. 

For how many disciples of Christ in the last 
century that is typical of the beginning of their 
spiritual life ! How many have come to man- 
hood in the fellowship of a traditional faith, to 
discover then that their faith was dead ! Ro- 
manes through the influence of physical science 



TOW ABB EVENING 331 

wakes to that horror; John Stirling through 
inability to find his way comes to that heavi- 
ness : Tennyson loses everything in the loss of 
his friend ; Carlyle looks upon a godless uni- 
verse under the power of a false philosophy. 
For the best youth of the nineteenth century 
the beginnings of spiritual life were hard. For 
thousands of young men and women in the 
colleges of the land there has been this ter- 
rible awakening. The Lord's Prayer which they 
learned in infancy, the Beatitudes whose music 
has been in their hearts from their earliest 
years, the Divine Christ to whom they have 
looked in awe and love, the Eternal God, their 
fathers' God, in whom they have steadfastly 
believed, become all at once uncertain, unreal, 
powerless. They awake to find them gone. 
There is no room for prayer in their world, the 
Beatitudes are an embarrassment in the struggle 
for existence ; Christ has no place in the order 
of the universe; and in the mechanism of the 
sum of things there does not seem to be any 
Heavenly Father. They have dreamed the ter- 
rible dream of Richter ; they awake with the 
awful announcement rinsing in their hearts : 
Children, you have no Father. 

This is the trouble with many of our young 
men and women. Christianity is beautiful, but 
it does not answer to the stern realities of life. 



332 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

It is too good to be true ; the order of existence 
accords with no such dream. For those two dis- 
ciples, on that morning, Christ was in his grave. 
For many young persons, terribly in earnest, 
Christianity is a sublime vision at war with the 
nature of things. They cannot believe. The 
faith that they have inherited has become in- 
credible. They do not boast of this incapacity 
for belief ; the nobler among them mourn over 
it. Many console themselves with the melan- 
choly conclusion : — 

" This little life is all we must endure. 
The grave's most holy peace is ever sure, 
We fall asleep and never wake again; 
Nothing is of us but the mouldering flesh, 
Whose elements dissolve and merge afresh 
As earth, air, water, plants and other men." 

What shall we say to these things ? Let us 
remember that these suffering souls are only in 
the first stage of spiritual life. They have the 
sense, as never before, of the beauty of the faith 
that they have lost. They are asking questions 
that endless time alone can fully answer. They 
are planting their feet upon the real world. 
They are getting ready to become men. Do not 
grieve over them, only try to keep them pure. 
The peril of the loss of faith is that it so often 
leads to the loss of honor. Goethe has drawn 
this danger in Faust. Faust as the believer in 



TOWARD EVENING 333 

knowledge is pure ; Faust defeated in his en- 
deavors to compass the truth turns to a life of 
shame. There is here the revelation of a law. 
The loss of faith tends toward the loss of charac- 
ter. *' Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we 
die." Life's high significance is bound up with 
faith ; and life's high significance once gone, the 
tendency is downward. Call upon the young to 
resist that tendency. Remind them of F. W. 
Robertson's fine resolve. In the blackest hour 
of doubt he saw that right was right, that honor 
was honor, and to that he bound his spirit. The 
voice of despair wild with mad joy still cries : — 

" And now at last authentic word I bring, 
^Vitnessed by every dead and living thing; 
Good tidings of great joy for you, for all: 
There is no God." 

Many noble young souls are saying in reply to 
this voice that, if there be no God to love them, 
no Christ to own them, no eternal righteousness 
to crown them, they will so live that the beauty 
of their life shall be a nameless rebuke to the 
brutal universe that would degrade them before 
destroying them. Only keep these fine souls 
from following in the footsteps of Faust, only 
hold them in the mood of Robertson of Brighton, 
and you may well give thanks over their per- 
plexity and pain. 

No man who has not won his faith through 



334 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

suffering can to-day count for much. He cannot 
understand our time ; that time is a call away 
from mere conventions to eternal realities. It 
insists that men shall live in the strength of 
things, go in the immediate vision of them, lean 
upon them without intermediary of any kind — 
tradition, creed, miracle, or high personal au- 
thority — for support. The times have taken our 
crutches from us and hidden them. If we walk, 
it must be on our feet and by our own strength. 
The man who has not thus been thrown back 
upon the Eternal cannot understand the deep 
need of the time. He cannot get down under the 
trouble of the generations. Niagara from above 
and Niagara from the Cave of the Winds are 
different. Look at the cataract from above and 
tremble; look at it from beneath, hear its inces- 
sant roar, and feel under your feet the everlast- 
ing rock. Look at the doubt of the times from 
above only, and you will be full of alarm ; through 
the heroism of your own soul go down below it, 
and, while your feet stand upon God, listen to 
the tumult and the thunder, and you will cry : 
" I will fear no evil, for thou art with me." The 
true teacher of youth to-day is the man who has 
been in an abyss below theirs, and who has found 
under the cataract of doubt and despair the eter- 
nal ground of hope. 

2. The second stage in the day's experience 



TOWARD EVENING 335 

was the walk and the human relief. How natural 
that is! These disciples pull themselves together, 
as we say, and start for Eminaus. The exercise 
sets their thoughts free ; the influence of nature 
breaks mildly in upon them; past associations 
open up the fountains of their mind ; a strange 
human love and tenderness toward each other 
comes into their hearts. They talk, and the 
relief thereupon begins. Full, rich, tender, con- 
fiding, and communicative humanity is a solace 
to humanity. 

Much of the talk of the suffering world is of 
this description. It has no earthly value in 
itself ; it is good only as an escape for pain. 
The talk of those two disciples was foolish, and 
the Lord did put a stop to it eventually, but lie 
allowed it to run on. He knew that it was a 
temporary necessity. The mind of man is some- 
times like a reservoir : you must get out the flood 
of folly before you can occupy it with wisdom. 
There is something divinely wise and patient in 
the delay of Christ. He did not join those dis- 
ciples too soon. He allowed them to have their 
talk out. Exhaustion is sometimes the only con- 
dition of receptivity. 

In every generation the young are new to the 
ageless problems of the mind. Their hearts are 
new to the ancient sorrow of the world. Debate 
has great fascination for brilliant youth. Debate 



336 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

of all things in earth and in heaven is a kind 
of apostolical succession for gifted minds in each 
new generation. These youthful discussions have 
little or no value in themselves. They are ways 
of escape for the undisciplined and unmatured 
power within. Let these debates over belief and 
unbelief, optimism and pessimism, free will and 
necessity, the hopes of immortality and the fears 
that would quench all hope, go on. These es- 
capes for serious power are indispensable ; thus 
is prepared the way of the Lord. 

In the bond of friendship, in the confidence 
of home, in the freedom of congenial society, 
talking is a great blessing. The hurt that one 
receives in the hard struggle of life is thereby, 
in a measure, healed, the pain of disappointment 
is lessened, the blows of adversity are for the 
moment disregarded, and the wounds of sorrow 
are done up in the oil and wine of tender human 
sympathy. Carlyle's doctrine of silence is true, 
but it is not the whole truth. Frequently the 
best way to get rid of a foolish mood is to let 
it expend its force in talk. When a group of 
persons have talked for hours over the situation 
of human life, with all the enthusiasm of youth 
and all the confidence of inexperience, the mass 
of talk, as it rolls into view a huge cloud of crude- 
ness and irrelevancy, is apt to induce readiness 
to listen to a wiser voice. 



TOWARD EVENING 337 

The method of Socrates was to get young 
men to talking. Many of them came to him 
sure that they understood all about holiness, 
courage, temperance, friendship, knowledge, and 
justice. He made them utter themselves, and 
if he did not make them wiser, he did draw 
much of the folly out of them. In the Gos- 
pels one is often amazed at the foolish sayings 
of the disciples, and one wonders how these 
things came to be recorded. It was part of the 
method of Jesus to make men talk. " Whom 
do men say that I, the Son of man, am?" 
The gossip of the multitude had for Jesus a 
human interest, inasmuch as he came to make 
men wise. 

In this way we are to look at much that calls 
itself literature. It is neither deep, nor strong, 
nor wise. It is in no way a masterful or even 
a useful dealing with the great tragic situations 
of human life. Human suffering and loss lie 
far away from these poor interpretations. Were 
it not for kindly intention, or the absence of 
unkind intention, these poor writings would be a 
kind of blasphemy against the majesty of human 
pain. "Knowest thou that the Lord will take 
away thy Master from thy head to-day ? " " Yea, 
I know it ; hold ye your peace." These utter- 
ances are currents of weakness, and folly. Let 
them flow. They may help to drain the bog. 



338 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

In writings upon religion the same fact must 
be noted. There are the men who deal only in 
the changes in theology, in the loss of authority 
in the Bible, in the unfavorable attitude of the 
people toward the church. Whole libraries of 
books are devoted to that in Christian faith 
which never was important except to men in 
their folly. These writers wander in negation, 
settle down in the heart of the transient, culti- 
vate the friendship of the perishable in the great 
faith of the world, become melancholy over the 
loss in the situation, speak only of the dead 
Christ in Jerusalem. Religion has its perpetual 
tragedy, — its questions about God, his character, 
his government of the world; its profound soli- 
citudes for man in his battle with evil and death. 
And oh, the foolish tongues that add to the great 
tragic mystery their painful Babel ! The litera- 
ture that they create is doubtless to be looked 
upon with patience and benignity. It is one of 
the ways that the poor world has for lessening 
its grief, for getting clear of its folly, for pre- 
paring the way of the Lord. 

3. The mysterious companion and his inter- 
pretation of the tragic event is the next aspect 
of the day. The disciples had talked themselves 
out. They were ready to hear another voice 
upon the subject, and that voice seemed at once 
to master them and their theme. Slowly the 



TOWARD EVENING 339 

movement of history prior to Christ seemed to 
shape itself for culmination in his cross ; slowly 

the significance of Moses and all the prophets 
appeared to be in their love and sacrifice ; 
slowly it began to dawn upon them that a suf- 
fering Messiah was the answer to the best hope 
of Israel, that a sacrificial Christ was the goal of 
the best teaching and of the best character of 
the past, and the divine hope for their race and 
for mankind. They received this thought because 
thev could not help it. It seemed so full, so ade- 
quate, so divine, that they could not resist it. 
And the strength, the confidence, the beauty of 
the speaker carried them away. 

Under the supreme believing minds of the 
race, under the sovereign teacher, Christ, under 
the living disciples who mediate his wisdom and 
grace, belief conies in this way. The situation 
of human existence and the universe is looked 
at through other eyes than our own ; we hear 
the great believers speak ; we listen to the monu- 
mental witnesses for the things of the spirit ; 
we ponder as their interpretation is put before 
us. And we receive it at last because we cannot 
help it ; that view of man and man's history and 
man's universe seems to be the truth. It conies 
to seem wiser, deeper, more adequate, nearer the 
heart of things, than all unbelief or doubt. When 
the spring is here, the dead grass disappears one 



340 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

knows not how ; it really goes because the mul- 
titudinous spears of living green are resistlessly 
pushing it out of the way. Life takes the place 
of death, and the forlorn earth is once more 
in the bloom of the year. In that way the old 
unbelief goes ; in that way the new faith comes. 
The mind that had spoken its own speculation 
until it got wearied is somehow hospitable to the 
thought of the highest. And when to that mood 
that thought is spoken, it wins its way like the 
Son of God. 

Personality somehow gathers about the great 
positive thought of the world. Faith centres in 
sublime personalities. Isaiah and Paul still teach 
the world, and soul speaks to soul. In the same 
way Christ is inseparable from his teaching. 
We listen to him as we read the Sermon on the 
Mount ; we hear him as we study his parables ; 
the Lord's Prayer still carries in it his accents ; 
the entire sum of his teaching, the whole vol- 
ume of his ministry, is a word spoken by him on 
the journey of life ; and the gracious and sublime 
presence is somehow deeper than all thought, 
stronger than all argument, and still carries the 
candid and earnest spirit away. When the best 
in the soul, in the church, in human history, in 
the universe comes to one with the persuasion of 
the voice of Christ and the power of his hallowed 
presence, a wondrous step has been taken into 



TOWARD EVENING 341 

faith, a great event has occurred in the journey 
of existence. 

4. The full and mighty response of the heart 
was unnoted at the time, but the disciples re- 
turned to it afterwards. They could not do other- 
wise, for the way in which Christ sounded and 
satisfied their whole being was a supreme wit- 
ness to his truth. 

If a musical instrument could speak, whom 
would it claim as master? Would it not judge 
by its own nature, would it not go by the witness 
of its heart ? The persons who merely make a 
noise upon it, or who set one register of power 
in it at painful variance with another, or who 
call only for what is weakest in its character, 
the great organ would brand as impostors. But 
the person whose touch from first to last liberates 
melody, whose knowledge and skill explore and 
bring into play the whole compass of its varied 
and wonderful nature, whose purpose and piece 
are suited to the entire fullness of its capacity, 
who gives it an existence of order, harmony, 
power, and joy, and who makes it support and 
blend with the chorus of human voices, — the 
mighty instrument would crown him master. 
The same experience leads to the confession of 
Christ as Lord. What he does for his disciples 
who walk with him, and who listen to his inter- 
pretation, and who yield themselves to his spirit, 



342 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

is the final reason for their faith in him. He 
plays upon life as no one else does. His touch 
is divine. He draws out the great incentives 
of the intellect, he sets free the vast, melodious 
feelings of the heart, he brings into action the 
sublime forces of the will, — patience, fortitude, 
faithfulness. He makes the soul of his true dis- 
ciple sing for joy. For those who live closest 
to him life becomes a chant. The great notes 
of trial, disappointment, disillusionment, sorrow, 
and despair are rolled up iuto the mightier com- 
binations of courage, achievement, wisdom, love, 
faith, joy, and they become but the sweet soul of 
pathos in the triumphant song of Christian experi- 
ence. The person whose heart burns under the 
power of Christ has the best of reasons for call- 
ing him Lord. 

The trouble with us all is that we know well 
only the forces that are not divine. The hands 
that have played upon us to our hurt, we know. 
The promises which the various aspects of the 
world have made to our devotion and which have 
not been kept, we understand. We have found 
many impostors, because we have allowed the 
wrong things to appeal to us. The invitation of 
a score of various pretenders we have accepted 
to our sorrow, the invitation of Christ we have 
not put to the proof. We have found out what 
is not good, what does not satisfy, what fails to 



TOWARD EVENING 343 

make the heart bum with a divine fire. We 
have walked with selfish pleasures, selfish ambi- 
tions, social dreams, business schemes, scientific 
aims, artistic purposes, Quite ends; and we have 
missed the zest upon whichwe had set our hearts. 
We have wasted our supreme devotion. It re- 
mains to seek the Lord with our whole strength, 
to make our religion central and governing, to 
give our Master an opportunity to awaken in us 
the witness of the burning heart. 

5. The last thing in that great day was Christ 
standing in the peace and glow of the evening. 
Here Is the climax of the day at its close. All 
doubts, all fears, all sorrows had lifted, and 
rolled away ; all hopes and surmises and dreams 
had come to their fulfillment ; the best of the day 
was the last. The Christ who had been absent in 
the morning, who had been unseen but strongly 
felt during the progress of the hours, stood in 
the sunset, framed in by its farewell fires and 
more glorious than they. The evening with 
Christ in it, the risen Christ about to reveal him- 
self fully to his disciples, is the supreme felicity 
of one of the happiest of days. 

May we not hope for this in our life ? May 
we not expect the morning heaviness to depart ? 
May we not anticipate something better than 
the walk and the relief that comes from the mere 
expression of sorrow ? May we not look for the 



344 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

divine companion on the journey and his burning 
power upon the heart? Shall manhood not come 
to this ? Shall it not rise into fellowship with 
the best that meets it, the mysterious highest 
that joins it on the way ? And when it is toward 
evening, shall we not look for something higher 
still? 

How easily we shall let the world go, if we 
possess something infinitely worthier than it ! 
How easy it was for those disciples to shut out 
the world when they were shutting in Christ ! 
It is always easy to surrender the less for the 
greater ; the weakness of childhood for the power 
of youth, the immaturity of youth for the disci- 
plined strength of manhood, the unseeing eyes 
of manhood for the vision that in the evening 
is full of the glorious Christ. Christ kept back 
from these disciples his best to the last. If we 
walk with him, if we listen to him, if we give up 
our nature to him, if we constrain him when it 
is toward evening to come in and abide with us, 
we shall see him at his best when our day is at 
its close. 

The way from Jerusalem to Emmaus is still 
there. Those eight miles from city to village 
have more of high and tender humanity in them 
than any similar distance on the face of the 
earth. That path winding among the Judean 
hills is alive with the pathos of man's loss, with 



TOWARD EVENING 345 

the beauty and peace of man's hope. It may 
well serve as a symbol for the journey of life, 
from the mystery of birth to the mystery of 
death, from the crowded city of life to the soli- 
tary abode at life's end. And as the risen 
Christ glorified that walk from city to village, 
as his presence filled it with unfading beauty, 
so it may be with our journey. He will join us 
somewhere on the way. He will go with us to 
the journey's end. He will make himself known 
to us at the last. He will change our whole view 
of our human world. He will show us that it 
belongs to him. 

Many sad tales are told in these days about 
life's end. Eminent servants of the body tell us 
there are no ecstasies in death. That is hardly 
true. Even so, there is something better than 
ecstasy. There is light in the soul, peace below 
the reach of pain, a voice that can be heard in 
the tumult, a sense of his presence who said, 
" Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end 
of the world." 

Death should be a sunset with Christ in it. 
The sun goes, but wherever he goes it is day. 
He blazes a path for himself through the forest 
of night. Darkness rests only upon the world 
that he has left. So the disciple of Christ may 
go. The Lord is his light and his salvation. 
The gloom of Christian death is confined to this 



346 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

earth ; it is for those who remain behind. The 
ongoing soul has a different fate. " The sun 
shall be no more thy light by day ; neither for 
brightness shall the moon give light unto thee : 
but the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting 
light, and thy God thy glory." 



XIX 

SOME CONTINUITIES OF INDIVIDUAL 
EXISTENCE 

"And through it he being dead yet speaketh." 

Hebrews xi, 4. 

The question of the duration of the individual 
human existence is one of great and grave con- 
cern. The question is of great concern because 
on the whole life is good, and still further, be- 
cause life is involved with love. The desire to 
go on is nearly universal, and almost every life 
is dear to some other life. The question is of 
grave concern because death confronts every 
man. The deepest conflict known to man is that 
between life and time, love and death. Life 
has no wish to come to its limit, to arrive at its 
goal, to attend the end and cease to be. Life 
and death are in absolute antagonism. They 
are inevitable, irreconcilable enemies, and love 
sides with life against death. Life and love stand 
together, supporting the same great cause. We 
see them this morning, fair, full of joy and yet 
touched with fear, raising the question that man 
has pondered since the world began : If a man 
die, shall he live again ? 



348 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

That the duration of individual existence is 
not arrested by the fact of physical death is the 
plain teaching of this story about Abel. Accord- 
ing to the belief of this writer, his hero had been 
dead several thousands of years ; and yet he was 
cited as a witness for true sacrifice against false. 
Although forty centuries had passed since he 
lived, he had continued in the earth a speaker 
for the Highest. His existence on the earth was 
brief ; his death was a tragedy ; but his life did 
not end at the grave. It continued a potent 
influence down to the time of Christ ; it has 
continued a good influence from that day to 
this. The text calls attention to this survival of 
life's power when life in this world has run its 
course ; it brings out the fact that the duration 
of individual existence, in one form or another, 
transcends the grave, and lasts on into future 
ages. It therefore fitly presents to our thought 
this morning the subject, Some Continuities of 
Individual Existence. 

1. There is first of all racial continuity. Par- 
ents live in their children, they continue to live 
in their descendants. They do not cease to live 
while any drop of their blood flows in the veins 
or builds the tissue of any living man or wo- 
man. If Abel had left children, if his children 
had given to the world other children, if the line 
of descent had gone on without break to our 



CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 349 

time, then it could have been said that in one 
sense this great ancestor was still alive. This is 
the secret of much of the charm and vitality of 
the story of Adam and Kve. They are the foun- 
tain of the race ; they live forever in the end- 
less organic existence of the race. Their blood 
is renewed in every generation ; and they are 
potent for weal or for woe in the continuous 
Stream of man's being. 

Does this sort of continuous existence mean 
anything? Is it capable of entering into the 
mind as serious fact and governing considera- 
tion ? Is man so made that the thought of the 
perpetuation of his physical being in the physi- 
cal being of an endless line of descendants may 
operate as motive? No noble man can doubt 
it. This elemental form of immortality is of 
the most serious concern. If a life-saver on 
this stormy coast could believe that forever his 
heroism as a life-saver would continue to repeat 
itself to the end of time, that it would continue 
to rescue countless thousands from the terrors 
of an angry sea, would it not operate upon his 
spirit as motive? If some train- wrecker could 
believe that his train-wrecking crimes would 
perpetuate themselves to the world's end, if he 
could see the millions of mutilated bodies rolled 
together as the issue of his wickedness and hear 
other millions weeping over the bereavement 



350 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

that lie had caused, would it not do something 
toward arresting him in his mad career ? 

Precisely analogous is the case of descent. 
There is nothing more appalling to an awakened 
mind than the idea of the perpetuation of indi- 
vidual wickedness in the organic tendencies of 
descendants. To be wicked is to do all that 
one can to make one's children curse the day 
in which they were born, and to curse the father 
or mother who thus ruthlessly smote them with 
pestilential misery. Youthful honor starts back 
in the presence of iniquity, at the thought not 
only of the disgrace that the wrong deed may 
bring to the person doing it, but also and yet 
more at the thought of the shame and suffering 
it may bring to those unborn. Parental love is 
here face to face with the deepest fact in exist- 
ence. No fondling of your child, no education, 
no advantages, no wealth or position, can alto- 
gether undo the organic injury of an unhallowed 
parenthood. Here the disaster is in the seat of 
life. You can mitigate it, but you cannot remove 
it. And on the other hand, is there any wish of 
the human heart nobler than that which seeks 
to provide for children clean blood, organic 
health, native honor, sweet humanity, a physical 
existence full of harmony, with endless music 
locked up in every fibre of it ? 

Here again the Adam and Eve story is vital. 



CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 351 

The disgrace of the parent becomes the calamity 
of the child, and the foreseen calamity of the 
child should avert the disgrace of the parent. 

How many, under the old-fashioned belief, have 
hated Adam and Eve for the woe that they 
wrought upon their descendants ; and now that 
we no longer live under that order of belief, we 
still see what woe and what glory parents may 
work out for their children and their children's 
children to the latest generation. 

This, it is said, is a trivial kind of immortality. 
It is not so. It is a momentous kind of immor- 
tality. If there were no other immortality, here 
is something intrinsically great and moving. 
Blood is the basis of life, good blood of good 
life, rich and rare blood of rich and rare life. 
The stream of blood is continuous from parent 
to child to the end of the line of descent. Shall 
it be a river of God, or a stream of ink ? Shall 
it be cleansed as it passes through you, or still 
further polluted? Shall you serve as filter or as 
sewer to the vital current? Shall you bless or 
curse your kind, live as angel or devil, as saviour 
or blaster, in the future life of your race ? Shall 
you hang millstones about the neck of your 
children, or give them wings to fly in the world 
of truth and love ? If this is not a noble immor- 
tality, there is none, and if this is not motive, 
again motive does not exist. 



352 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

2. There is continuity of individual existence 
through literary record and achievement. Great 
men live in the historic record of their great- 
ness ; other great men live on account of their 
literary achievement. Perhaps there should be 
included the class who live in great monuments 
and those who live because they designed and 
executed these monuments. Monumental fame, 
whether in art, science, philosophy, political ac- 
tivity, historic record, or religious worth, may 
serve as a generic phrase to cover those who have 
achieved greatness and those who have become 
great by the fitting commemoration of greatness. 

In the narrower sense of monumental fame, 
how few of the countless multitudes of our race 
are chosen for this honor. Ten poets there may 
be who are sure of immortality. Perhaps there 
may be an equal number of philosophers, artists, 
scientific pioneers, orators, historians, rulers, and 
supreme religious leaders whose name and fame 
will endure to the end of time. To any sane 
view of history the number of these elect spirits 
is small. The stars are many, but the vacant 
spaces as one looks up into the infinite night 
reduce the multitudinous stars to insignificance. 
The stars are many, but how few of them are 
visible to the naked eye and visible everywhere. 
Limited in number, mostly local in power, seldom 
of universal significance, — such is the fact about 



CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 353 

the shining contents of space, such is the fact 
about the glorious and abiding names in human 
history. 

There is, however, a vastly larger view of the 
subject than this. Monuments are for humanity. 
The hero is the representative of humanity. The 
individuals of the generation in which the hero 
lived and achieved live in the monument that 
perpetuates the memory of his greatness. The 
Pyramids tell not only of the heroic kings of 
Egypt, but also of the heroic race that lived and 
achieved under them. The great music of the 
world uplifts into life and power not only the 
soul of the dead master, but also the countless 
souls among whom he lived and from whom he 
drew his interest in existence, and whose sorrow 
and hope became the vast minor and major of 
his mightiest harmonies. The historian is at his 
best when he writes of the people. In the pages 
of Thucydides, the Greek race fights, suffers, 
and goes down ; in Tacitus, races live, taste the 
sweets of victory, and drink the bitterness of 
defeat. In Carlyle, hero- worshiper that he is, the 
French people rise and light the fire that con- 
sumes a thousand years of misdeeds and crimes. 
In Green, the English race displays its strong 
and hopeful existence. In all the greater works 
of man, the ultimate voice that one hears is the 
voice of the people. If we listen to Cromwell, 



354 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

we hear the stern notes of outraged English 
manhood ; if we listen to Washington, we catch 
the firm tones of the American colonist ; if we 
listen to Lincoln, the voice of the American 
people is again ringing in our ears. You cannot 
forget the people, the nation, the humanity, that 
the great man represents. The great thing about 
the earthly immortality of Jesus Christ is that 
one hears in his voice the articulate conscience of 
a purified humanity. When we remember him, 
we remember the race for whom he stands. 
When we pay our homage to his person, we offer 
veneration to the manhood of the world. 

The best example of this universal blending 
of the hero and those whom the hero served, 
one finds in the anonymous in literature. Who 
wrote the Psalms ? No one knows, no one will 
ever know. They are monumental utterances of 
the religious soul of the nameless writer and 
his nameless contemporaries. They are, I some- 
times think, a better introduction to the deep and 
beautiful heart of those early centuries because 
they are nameless. They are no longer a merely 
individual monument ; they have general, racial, 
universal significance. The beholding eye, the 
rapt soul, the suffering and singing heart of a 
whole people live in those incomparable lyrics ; 
the countless individuals of that age, as at least 
capable of rising to this height, live in them. 



CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 355 

There is the Book of Job. Who wrote it no 
man ean tell. No man will ever be able to tell. 
It represents indeed the fortunes, the epic, of an 
individual soul ; and at the same time it utters 
the epic significance of a suffering and achieving 
humanity. It is as good for the modern world 
as it was for the ancient. It is a monumental 
book, perpetuating the meaning and tin? power 
of the unnumbered lives of a vanished world, 
taking up into itself the fleeting generations of 
never-resting time, giving continuity to their 
brief existence through its own endless and age- 
less utterance of the deepest and the highest in 
man and in the fortunes of man's race. 

I am inclined to think that this capacity of 
the Bible to take up into itself the meaning of 
the swift-coming and swift-vanishing generations 
of men is its supreme capacity. Who wrote the 
various books of the Bible is a fair and an in- 
teresting question. A thousand other questions 
concerning its origin, contemporary significance, 
and limitations are interesting. But the su- 
preme question concerns its fitness to serve as 
the monumental inspiration of the religious life 
and the monumental witness of the religious 
heart. In this book are the prophets, the psalm- 
ists, the apostles, and the Master ; in this book 
are the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Roman races, 
the Latin, the Teuton, the Anglo-Saxon, and the 



356 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

American peoples at their best. In it will be 
gathered and perpetuated the best life of Europe, 
Asia, Africa, America, and the islands of the 
sea; it is destined to become the one supreme 
literary monument of a spiritual humanity. 

Does this kind of continued existence mean 
anything? What thoughtful man would say 
that it does not ? Does the shaft on Bunker Hill 
take on no additional meaning from the fact that 
it represents a nation in arms ? Is the Declara- 
tion of Independence a monument only to the 
political genius of Jefferson ? Does it not mean 
infinitely more because in it we can hear the 
eloquent manhood of the American people ? Is 
the Constitution simply a device of Hamilton, 
Madison, and other wise leaders, or the organ of 
a race of freemen ? Is our history the record of 
the achievements and triumphs of solitary genius 
only, or at the same time a record of a social 
achievement and triumph ? And does it not mean 
infinitely more to us to look upon the supreme 
monuments of the race as standing for the best 
life of the race ? These monuments gained their 
power over us from their racial significance. 
When we look at them, we are surrounded by 
a great cloud of witnesses. The dead, the count- 
less dead, live again, and cheer us on at the high 
and serious task of existence. And if monuments 
gain their power in this way, if they become great 



CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 357 

only as they continue the race in living influence, 
surely there is here inspiration for heroic char- 
acter. We can help to make "Washington stand 
for a nobler America. We can do something to 
enable Lincoln to rule over a greater America. 
We can do something to add to the significance 
of every great monument in the land, every 
great monument in the world. We can do some- 
thing to increase the mass and the worth of that 
for which the great poem, the great history, the 
great oration, the great philosophy, the great re- 
ligion speaks and sings. We can do something 
toward the enrichment and splendor of that ideal 
kingdom for which Christ stands. Thus, when 
we shall have ended life and gone the way of 
all preceding generations, we shall continue to 
be in the greatened monumental records, achieve- 
ments, ideals, and hopes of mankind ; we shall 
live continuously in the living and growing 
power by which humanity is interpreted, inspired, 
and carried toward its goal. 

3. There is, inside this continuity of individual 
existence through monumental forms, the conti- 
nuity that the individual obtains through insti- 
tutions. Here the family comes again into our 
thought, and in a new way. It is the oldest 
institution in the world. In it the memory of 
individuals is longer preserved than in any other 
institution ; in it the character of individuals 



358 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

operates for good or for evil in a unique manner. 
The memory of those who died in childhood, 
before they acquired any distinct recognition 
beyond family connections, is lovingly cherished ; 
the memory of infants who came into this sphere 
of mystery for a few brief days, or even hours, 
continues part of the treasure and sorrow of 
family life. Who has not heard a deep-hearted 
mother whisper to friendly ears the story of her 
dead children, and who has not observed that in 
such a mother the whisper became more reveren- 
tial and tender with the lapse of time? The 
dead infant that never saw the light, the dead 
child, continues in the mind and heart of the 
noble mother while life lasts. Carlyle at four- 
score years of age, writing to console a niece on 
the death of her child, recalls his mother's sor- 
row more than sixty years before over a simi- 
lar calamity. Thus in the third generation the 
memory wrought with tender power. 

The business of the world is another institu- 
tion. Great men are remembered here, and when 
they are no longer remembered, their business 
achievement and spirit continue. The organized 
business of this city has in it the ability and 
fidelity of a million noble men ; it rests upon the 
insight and power of the past ; it is the monu- 
ment to the achievement of the past, and in it 
in some measure the existence of those vanished 



CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 359 

thousands of leading men is perpetuated. Every 
vocation was organized by some man, some Tu- 
bal Cain started the new form of social service. 
Every vocation is developed and perfected by 
the ability and fidelity of the successive gener- 
ations that pursue it. Farming, mining, ship- 
building, navigation, all forms of production, 
exchange, and transportation, carry in them the 
power and character of the worthy who served 
man in this manner. The maxim that the blood 
of the martyrs is the seed of the Church is of 
universal application. The color of the rose is 
drawn out of the earth and out of the sun, out 
of the invisible and infinite, and in the same 
way the bloom of the world's enterprise carries 
in it the character and tone of the world's great 
workmen. 

The school and college are other institutions 
that perpetuate the lives of individuals. Schools 
like Rugby and Eton and Harrow do more 
than tell of the great men who studied or taught 
there. Arnold, the great master of Rugby, stands 
for a multitude. Stanley, the beautiful disci- 
ple, suggests another multitude of invisible but 
perpetuated lives. Eton recalls not only Wel- 
lington and Gladstone, the great soldier and the 
great statesman, but many centuries of aspiring 
boyhood. John Morley tells in his life of Glad- 
stone of the ovation given to Dr. Keate, an old 



360 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

and severe master of Eton. The responses to the 
toast to the Queen and to the Queen Dowager 
vanished into insignificance before the cheering 
given to this old master. He rose among many 
hundreds of eminent men whom as boys he had 
taught and flogged. So overwhelmed was he by 
the universal outburst of reverence and affection 
that he could not speak. The rough old school- 
master stood there a king, representing a king- 
dom of vanished life. In his severity he has 
stimulated humor for a century. " Write down 
Hamilton to be flogged for breaking my win- 
dow," said the master. " Sir, I did not break 
your window," cried Hamilton. " Write down 
Hamilton to be flogged for breaking my window 
and for lying," shouted the master. " Upon my 
soul, sir, I did not break your window," protested 
Hamilton. " Write him down to be flogged for 
breaking my window, for lying, and for swear- 
ing," concluded the master. So the generations 
of schoolboys live in the strength and roughness 
and devotion of great teachers. 

We have near us a college great by the pre- 
sence in it of nearly three centuries of noble 
graduates. While it stands it will conserve the 
lives of its worthy sons, doing its work by the 
strength of the living and the dead. Part of 
the power of Harvard College is in its associa- 
tions. The Puritan has left upon it his inef- 



CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 3G1 

faceable mark. The colonist, the revolutionist, 
tlu; daring* patriot in the war for the preservation 
of the Union, each has dyed its name in the fair 
and brilliant colors of his own devotion. The 
great succession of educated, gifted, and high- 
minded youth has hallowed the college yard, the 
trees, the old buildings, and charged Alma Mater 
with the sacred strength of unnumbered lives. 
Great men appear in her history like distinct, 
familiar stars ; but the light in the firmament 
in which these stars move is not all from them. 
Thousands and tens of thousands of invisible 
shining lives are there as points of light ; they 
are known by no special sign, they exist in the 
general illumination and peace which they help 
to maintain. 

Political institutions are another form of per- 
petuation. History in a living nation and for a 
living people is power. Japan is to-day doing 
battle by the virtue of the living and by the 
strength of the dead. Her national life has con- 
served the noble devotion of an immemorial 
succession of brave and patriotic men. In this 
American republic we look for the same kind 
of continuity. The republic will never be too 
great to rememoer the founders and their gen- 
eration, the redeemers and their militant hosts ; 
it will never be too great to recall the successive 
generations of its lovers and servants. The old 



362 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

flag will grow more and more precious and mov- 
ing the older it becomes. When the dear burn- 
ing love of sixty generations of boys and girls is 
seen in its crimson bars, when the pure sweet 
wisdom of sixty generations of the aged and 
venerable is beheld in its silver stars, and when 
in its field of blue the loyalty is felt of a mul- 
titude that no man can number, the power of 
the flag will be a still vaster delight, and the 
nation whose majestic ensign it is will be greater 
because of the presence in its memory and heart 
of an unseen and countless host. 

The supreme institution is the Christian 
Church. What a perpetuater it has been ! The 
precious literatures of the Hebrew and the Greek 
races have been preserved and handed down by 
the Church. Great men, the succession of great 
men, great races, and their work have been con- 
served to the modern world through the media- 
tion of the Church. We owe immortal thanks 
to this institution, not only for the kingdom of 
love for which it stands, but also for bringing 
down to our time the lost treasure of ancient 
races overwhelmed in calamity. 

The Church is an institution with the sub- 
limest vision. It observes All Saints' day ; it 
observes All Souls' day. All the human beings 
that have breathed this atmosphere of ours in 
any century of time, in any zone of our globe, 



CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 3G3 

are annually recalled in its prayer. Their names 
are forgotten ; all distinct trace of them has van- 
ished ; but the effect of their life is still in the 
world, and this consciousness of the continuity 
of their being in the life of their race is thus 
seriously confessed. I rejoice in All Saints' day. 
It does me good to recall the great and the 
good who wrought mightily for our humanity, 
who rose through the purgatorial fires of time 
into spotless character and benign love. I re- 
joice in All Saints' day, but I rejoice still more 
in All Souls' day. I think then of all the chil- 
dren that have seen the light, of all the human 
beings that have ever lived, of their sin, sorrow, 
love, despair, and death, and I can see this 
cloud of humanity, vast, dark, terrible, yet shot 
through, here and there transfigured, its wild 
and broken circumference edged with the gold 
of unforgotten and unforgettable service to pos- 
terity, and by posterity's pity, gratitude, and 
hope. The one humanity is to me, I confess, 
a sublime vision, the whole might of the past 
living in the life of to-day, and for this one 
humanity the Church is the great witness. 

What is there here to greaten our hearts? 
Much, I believe. Institutions conserve and per- 
petuate what is best in human life ; they pro- 
long indefinitely the influence of good men and 
women. We have in our own church an impress- 



364 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

ive example. We worship every Sunday with 
seven generations of the members of this church 
and congregation. The building is alive with 
the dear humanity of the past. The dead speak 
with a voice deeper, more tender, and mightier 
far than any living voice. The hush of their 
finished career is upon us, the awe of the unseen 
in which they are gathered rests upon us. The 
stone cries out of the wall, and the beam out of 
the timber, the character and spirit of our entire 
past is active and potent upon us to-da}^. Oh, that 
we might live to increase this holy spell, to add 
to this majestic influence, to greaten the church 
when we are no longer visible here ! Oh, that we 
might so live as to become worthy to be numbered 
among those whose spirit shapes, and will for- 
ever shape, the best life here ! Oh, that we might 
so live that in this Church of Christ we shall find 
our silent, beautiful, monumental witness ! 

4. These continuities of individual existence 
lead up to the question of personal continuity. 
The human spirit is able to lay hold of other 
lives, make them the bearers of its meaning, and 
carry down the stream of time its power. When 
the soul can no longer go on here, it is able to 
deposit its energy in the living world, and thus 
continue its influence in the earth. All this is 
fact, clear, certain, undeniable. These continui- 
ties of which I have spoken as matters of fact 



CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 365 

raise the great question of faith, the capacity and 
likelihood of the individual soul to live after 
death in the unseen. 

Something has already been said in favor of 
personal continuity in the great facts to which 
I have called attention. If it is true that in 
the few brief years of his earthly career an Abel 
can speak forever in behalf of the Highest, that 
he can forever ennoble the blood of the race, 
add to the depth and pathos of its literary monu- 
ments, increase the volume of meaning and spirit 
in its institutions, it would seem that in such 
a being we are dealing with an amazing and a 
priceless value. If God is moving mankind out 
of the depths of brutal life up and on toward 
the heights of spiritual being, it would seem that 
those who help Him, who enter into this world- 
process as servants of God, must be dear to 
Him. When men seek noble ends over long dis- 
tances of time and against adverse forces, those 
who come to their aid and who stand by them 
become permanently dear to them. If a captain 
is battling with hurricanes and high seas, and 
if some expert navigator among the passengers 
comes to his aid when his staff of officers is ex- 
hausted, and helps him to bring his ship safely 
into port, we expect that captain to love that 
helper forever. If a son or daughter is in grave 
moral peril, and if a minister speaks a word, 



366 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

or shows a kindness, or exerts an influence that 
saves to faith and honor that son or daughter, 
do you think noble parents can ever cease to 
remember and love the helper ? Is not this the 
way of humanity? The domestic that serves 
you in faithfulness, the merchant that has always 
done fairly by you, the engineer that has for 
years taken you to and from the city in safety, 
the family physician whose devotion is beyond 
praise, who has been with you in the great crises 
of family life, the writer of the noble book, the 
teacher of your mind who is at the same time 
the friend of your heart, — all become dear to 
you. The greater you are in character, the closer 
you hold to your grateful heart the servants 
of your life. And shall mortal man be more 
just than God? Shall a man be more pure than 
his Maker ? Shall we read the character of the 
Eternal in the wild and devouring sea, or through 
the appreciations, thanksgivings, friendships, and 
dear loves of the human heart ? 

In so far as the Infinite has great ends, they 
must be dear to him who serves those ends. 
In so far as the universe has meaning, to that 
extent it is seeking the realization of great ends. 
In its mighty movement upon its exalted ends, 
some things must be precious to it. And can 
there be anything so precious as the enlight- 
ened sympathy, efficient devotion, and suffering 



CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 367 

love of good men ? If Abel can forever speak 
for the cause of God, then if God is as good as 
good men, He will not allow this faithful speaker 
to die. If pure and loving hearts are essential to 
God in the lifting of society into higher moods 
and conditions, God will not pay them with 
death and the grave, with the life of a worm or 
a fly, but with an endless opportunity to love 
and serve Him. If one may believe in the hu- 
manity of God, one must believe in the immor- 
tality of the servants of God's humanity. The 
hero, the saint, the prophet, the humble witness 
for righteousness everywhere, must be a price- 
less value to the God of honor and love. The 
worth of good men to men leads to this con- 
clusion : the priceless and endless worth of good 
men to God. The first premise of faith in per- 
sonal continuity after death is the heart of the 
Eternal. It is a heart of honor ; and therefore 
life's worth is guarded by God's honor. 

But most men are not good. What shall we 
say about them ? There is the wheat, and there 
is the chaff. What shall we say about the chaff ? 
God winnows humanity as the farmer winnows 
his grain. If we say the good are dear to Him, 
must we not say that the bad are the reverse of 
dear? 

Again we return for an answer to our human- 
ity. God made the human heart at its best, and 



368 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

He must be as good as the best that He "has 
made. If a mother cannot surrender a mistaken 
child, if she still holds to it through good report 
and evil report, if she follows it with prayers 
and tears and strong cryings unto God when she 
can serve it in no other way, if, when her last 
breath is leaving the poor body worn down to 
death with sorrow for this faithless child, that 
last breath is a remembrance of the dear sweet 
eyes of its infanthood, the clear and high instincts 
of its early years, the undeniable capacity for 
goodness that has never been lost, that cannot 
be lost, and a solemn appeal, " Father, into thy 
hands I commend the soul of my erring child," 
— do you think that God will do less ? Perhaps 
no soul is or ever can become chaff. Perhaps 
the chaff is the evil in the good and in the bad. 
Perhaps the task of God's fan is to get the chaff 
out of the wheat, and to get the wheat out of 
the chaff, to winnow the wickedness out of the 
good, and to recover the goodness that lives in 
the bad. Perhaps capacity counts with God as 
a priceless value. You see a diamond flashing in 
the crown of a king. That is beautiful ; that is 
nearly priceless. You see a diamond new from 
the mine, fastened in the rock which was dug 
up with it, covered with the mire in which it 
was found, shapeless, unsightly, apparently dead. 
The expert knows that the stuff is there. Cut 



CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 369 

it out, put it on the wheel. Turn the capacity 
to character. In that dull, dead stone there is 
the capacity to flash and shine like the jewel 
in the crown of the king. That capacity makes 
it precious. You will not throw it away, you 
will save it because of the splendor that it may 
become. So God must regard the multitudes 
to whom the name of good cannot be applied. 
They are here with the rock of brutality adhering 
to them and with the mire of animalism staining 
their whole existence, they look no better than 
the beast of the field, and they act in many in- 
stances far worse. But they have the capacity to 
become men, men of honor, devotion, heroism, 
love. And that capacity must restrain God from 
allowing them to perish. 

It need not be for them at first a desirable 
continuity. Here we come to the great idea of 
retribution. Cain must live and suffer to atone 
for his crime. The universe is not done with him 
when he has sinned against it. The universe 
is not done with a bad man at death. He must 
face God, law, justice, the fearful reality of a 
just order; he must live and suffer, and settle 
his account with the Eternal. Between the begin- 
ning and the end of a sinful will there is plenty 
of room for a retribution more terrible than 
even the imagination of a Dante can paint. 

We sometimes marvel at the strength of the 



370 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

Puritan's belief in the reality of the life after 
death. His confidence in it is so amazing to us 
in our hesitation and doubt about it. His sense 
of its reality, its overwhelming reality, is scarcely 
intelligible to us in our vagueness and uncer- 
tainty. We wonder how he could talk so long, 
and with such sustained and solemn interest, 
about heaven and hell, how he could bring those 
pictures of the future to bear upon the details 
of his earthly life. What was the secret of it ? 
Belief in God. He lived in the most solemn 
certainty of God's presence in this universe, of 
God's searching presence in every human con- 
science, and of his infinite claim upon every 
human soul. He lived in the awful consciousness 
of the living God. The truth and falsehood of 
his thoughts, the right and wrong of his con- 
science, the love and the hate of his heart, the 
nobility and the baseness of his life concerned 
God. His existence concerned God above all 
and beyond all ; and what thus stood of infi- 
nite moment in the esteem of God he saw could 
not die. He might rejoice in heaven forever ; 
he might suffer in hell forever ; but whether 
for good or for evil, for weal or for woe, live he 
must, perish at death he cannot. To me, this is 
the sovereign lesson of Puritan faith. It is this 
that gives to the Puritan immortal distinction. 
He took his life from God. He held it in 



CONTINUITIES OF LIFE 371 

God's light, h»' read its meaning by its con- 
cern for God, and stood by the issues of his 
great faith. 

There can be no real belief in personal con- 
tinuity apart from belief in God. The secret 
of faith in man's worth is in the higher faith in 
God's humanity. Those who see God, who read 
his character through the best that lie has made, 
who dwell with God, speak to Him, serve Him, 
love Him, form the habit of the intellect in the 
sense of his supreme reality, and who stand in 
the awe of a sovereign accountability to Him, 
will not find it hard to believe in the life ever- 
last ing. They see that men are born for God, 
that they are born for life in terms of the Eternal 
conscience, that they must live and mount by 
the serene path of joy or by the fiery discipline 
of woe, till they become the conscious, perfected 
sons of God, continuous and endless servants in 
his continuous and endless kingdom of love. 
" Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and 
thy dominion endureth throughout all genera- 
tions." AVithin the compass of that kingdom 
all men live. They are there the subjects of the 
divine conscience and heart ; they are there 
under the inspiration of just praise and under 
the discipline of just pain ; they are there that 
they may rise into the endless joy of perpetual 
and perfect service a 



XX 

4 

GOD ALL IN ALL 

" That God may be all in all." 

1 Corinthians, xv, 28. 

All great religion is a kind of tidal interest 
in God, an nnreturning, endless Godward sweep 
of the soul. The character of the soul in deatl*, 
in Tennyson's great lyric, is the character of the 
soul in all profound religious experience : — 

" When that which drew from out the boundless deep 
Turns again home." 

The sea departs from itself in the incoming tide ; 
it returns to itself in the tide that goes seaward. 
The animal, the sensuous, the merely temporal 
life carries man away from his true self, away 
from home. When man considers, when he comes 
to himself, his first great resolve is, " I will arise 
and go to my Father." And the greater a man's 
religious experience becomes, the vaster is his 
interest in the Eternal, the mightier is the return 
of his whole being to God. Return unto thy 
rest, O my soul. Lord, thou hast been our dwell- 
ing place in all generations. Thou hast made us 
for thyself, and we cannot rest till we rest in thee. 
Listen to the song of the river. It is now the 



GOD ALL IN ALL 373 

song of the mountain torrent, again it is the 
lyric of the collected and chastened stream, still 
again it is the subdued music of the greater 
volume and the steadier current, once more it is 
the peace and hope with which it meets the 
mighty sea. From first to last, through all its 
notes, the song is of the river that longs for the 
sea. Such is the religious soul. It begins, it con- 
tinues, and it ends in the great sigh, " When 
shall I come and appear before God?" Religion 
is the sense of God in life, the quest for more 
and more of God, the increasing current of life 
God ward, the final rescue of existence from its 
own littleness, its rush into the tides of the Infi- 
nite, who takes it forth into the boundlessness 
and peace of his own being. 

There is something very impressive in the 
solemn interest with which all the greater think- 
ers of the race regard the Infinite. Plato is no- 
where so great as when he is struggling to express 
his vision of the Eternal goodness at the heart 
of the universe. As the great sun is to the 
whole visible world the source of light and life 
and joy, so is the Eternal soul of goodness to the 
whole invisible realm. It is maker, sustainer, 
perfecter. It is the light and life and joy of the 
eternal sphere. It is God in his boundless be- 
nignity and power sending forth the eternal tides 
of his blessed life upon all the orders of being 



374 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

in his abiding world. Even more impressive, 
when one considers the sober and unimaginative 
cast of his intellect, is the quiet and free delight 
into which Aristotle rises, at the close of his 
ethics and elsewhere, as he faces the sovereign 
life and joy of the Eternal mind. There is then 
in his cold speech a glow as of the morning, a 
touch of the fire and splendor of the evening, 
The beatitude that lures him onward is the hope 
of the supreme moment when man may share 
God's vision of his world. Spinoza continues 
this tradition and strengthens it. He has been 
called, what every great religious soul must ever 
be, a God-intoxicated man. And it is still possi- 
ble to worship with Spinoza, so sovereign is his 
conception of God, and so great and pure his love 
for the Eternal. Even Kant, who is so shy in 
the presence of the Infinite, so critical of every 
scheme of thought that professes to conduct man 
thither, so agnostic in dealing with the world 
of the intellect, when he comes to the human 
conscience breaks forth into song. Here is some- 
thing that will not be confined, that takes the 
philosopher beyond all boundaries, past all fini- 
tude, into the moral being of God. In Hegel, as 
in Edwards, God is the Alpha and the Omega, the 
beginning and the end. So it is with the entire 
succession of the greater thinkers of our race. 
Either at the beginning of their thinking or at 



GOD ALL IN ALL 375 

the end they arc fascinated, carried away by the 
vision of the Eternal. And this great tradition 
of the loftiest intellect of the world is another 
witness to the fact that in Him we live and move 
and have our being. The mystic and the philoso- 
pher come at last to the same confession : I have 
seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. 
In the great words, " that God may be all in 
all," the Apostle sets forth his aim and hope for 
himself, for all like himself, and for all rational 
beings in all worlds, and at the same time he 
utters the deepest thought of his intellect. In 
the text Paul is both saint and philosopher. 
His heart's desire is that God may be all in all 
in his own soul, that he may be all in all in the 
souls of all men, that he may be all in all in 
the whole rational universe. A vaster or higher 
aspiration there could not be. It is the vision of 
all sin, wrong, error, infirmity, woe, forever lifted 
and banished from the universe. It is the vision 
of the love that is Infinite and Eternal passing 
through all spiritual life in the strength and 
sweetness of its own tides, cleansing all hearts, 
keeping all souls, lifting all into perfect obedi- 
ence and perfect peace. The Apostle longs for 
one eternal day, light everywhere, light without 
darkness or cloud or shadow, light over all and 
in all ; a universe dwelling in the light Eternal. 
This is Paul the saint. This is the longing of 



376 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

his soul that God, the Eternal Lover of all souls, 
may be all in all. 

Paul the philosopher keeps company with Paul 
the saint. There is a hierarchy of beings. There 
are the bare worlds ; there are the various forms 
of life in these worlds ; there are the uncounted 
multitudes of human souls ; there is the one 
Lord of all human souls, putting all evil under 
his feet, subduing all the wild forces in the race 
that he came to save, reigning till the kingdom 
of love is forever sure, and then gathering up 
his kingdom in himself, delivering all for the 
whole eternal future into the dear and bound- 
less life of God. Thus in a few words, from a 
profound and teeming mind, Paul indicates his 
thought concerning the fate of man, the fate of 
the kingdom of God in time, and the fate of the 
sovereign Person in that kingdom, our Lord Jesus 
Christ. All moves forward into the eternal be- 
atitude in the heart of God. There all is ordered 
in perfect truth and in perfect love and in per- 
fect fellowship. 

How can we picture Paul's great thought? 
We can say with Origen that God has many 
finite worlds, that all finite worlds are a kind of 
santa scala, a holy stairway, a path of ascension, 
in the divine discipline by which God prepares 
his sons for his eternal glory. We may think of 
the process of discipline as long, hard, weighty 



GOD ALL IN ALL 377 

with solemn experience, and for many souls full 
of woe, and yet not endless in woe or in pain or in 
sin for any creature that God has made. We may 
figure a redemptive universe, changing its forms 
in the interest of righteousness, passing from one 
degree of perfectness to another, dissolving its 
discords and shedding them forever, and resolv- 
ing itself at last into one eternal rhythm of 
rational being and love in the infinite soul of 
God. Whatever form imagination shall devise, 
Paul's central thought is the thought of order. 
And this order is set at last in the heart of God. 
The song in the whole range of its notes is all 
order, all truth, all light, all fire, all soul ; it is 
the voice and utterance of the Divine Soul. This 
is the goal toward which Paul sees the universe 
tending. The consummation is the eternal song. 
This passion for God of Paul the saint and 
of Paul the philosopher is one that Christianity 
must forever renew in the disciples of Jesus. 
Our Lord said that the pure in heart shall see 
God. He said that we must love God with the 
whole strength of our being. The vision of God 
and the love of God are the heart of the gospel. 
They give to the intellect great and increasing 
interest in God. We wonder and dream how 
God lives, and while our thought must fall infi- 
nitely short of his eternal life, we cannot deny 
ourselves the privilege of thinking about God. 



378 THROUGH MAN TO GOB 

There are three epochs in the life of God, 
his life before all worlds, his life in all worlds, 
his life after all worlds have been recalled into 
himself. Let us look up with awe to the Infinite 
life, and let us for a few moments wonder and 
dream about God. 

1. There is the life of God before all worlds. 
One of the vexing and recurring questions in 
the early days of Christian teaching was this: 
What was God doing before He began to make 
the world? The impatient answer was that He 
was preparing a place of torment for those who 
should ask foolish questions. The question may 
be unanswerable ; it is nevertheless legitimate. 
Indeed, it is inevitable. If we care for God, we 
must continue to wonder about his life. And there 
is no aspect of the Eternal life that moves us to a 
deeper wonder than God's life before all worlds. 

We know that our lives are recent. A few years, 
a few decades, ago we were not. The sight of our 
eyes, the hearing of our ears, the imaginations of 
our heart, the forces of our personal soul, were 
then no part of this world. Oar parents, our kin- 
dred, our traceable ancestors go farther back, but 
measured against the centuries their existence 
is as it were of yesterday. The nations of the 
world are divided into the new and the old, and 
of the older some carry the line of a living human- 
ity into the dim, distant past. Even here we are 



GOD ALL IN ALL 379 

overwhelmed with the sense of recentness. The 
peoples in the valley of the Nile, in the valley 
of the Euphrates, are so recent. Their works of 
art, their pyramids, tombs, city walls, temples, 
are the ancient works of a recent race. If we say 
that man has been on this earth for fifty thou- 
sand years, even that is nothing. u A thousand 
years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it 
is past,. and as a watch in the night." 

J 'receding the advent of man in the earth were 
numberless forms of animal life. The teeming 
energy of the Creator was visible in their power 
and fertility. Even they are new upon the stage 
of existence. The earth which they claim as 
their playground, their battlefield, and their home 
is young. The planets that accompany it in its 
march, the moon that waits upon it like some 
bright and sweet attendant, the sun that gives 
light and life to it, and that glorifies the whole 
order to which it belongs, — all are of recent 
birth. The countless shining worlds of space, 
the numberless glorious contents of the stellar 
universe, are young when measured against the 
eternity that preceded all the forms of being 
now in existence. Thought is great. It is the 
magician that with a single stroke can wipe time 
and space clean of all worlds, as one might rub 
out the curious figures on a blackboard. Thought 
is great. It is the enchanter that can present us 



380 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

in the Eternal presence when there were as yet 
no morning stars to sing together, when there 
were as yet no sons of God to shout together for 
joy. Back into this region of pure Deity man's 
intelligence takes him, back to the eternity when 
God was all in all, when beside Him there was 
nothing, beyond Him nothing ; when He was the 
universe, when the universe was He. 

How did He live in that lonely eternity ? 
Could He be content with his own thoughts ? 
Could He be satisfied with the dreams of the 
worlds that were to come into being ? Could the 
eternal designs in his intelligence of the coming 
forms of the universe, like the prior and beauti- 
ful designs of some great artist, sufficiently de- 
light his soul ? Could an archetypal universe, a 
universe modeled in thought, forever existing 
in his intellect, forever blazing in beauty and 
splendor, forever expressing his creative purpose, 
holding in its vast order images of the coming 
multitudinous forms of created beings, meet all 
the demands of God's heart ? Our God is love. 
Whom did He love ? Our God's delight is the 
delight of the lover. And how could this lonely, 
Eternal God know either love or joy ? 

Then, too, the race that was to be, the race of 
man, was to be a social race. It was to consist 
of young men and maidens, old men and little 
children, lovers, husbands, wives, families, kin- 



GOD ALL IN ALL 381 

dreds, nations, a social humanity. How could this 
social race, this race of lovers, come out of an 
individual God whose best attempt at love was 
the love of himself ? 

Thus are we thrown back upon the glorious 
mystery for which the Trinity stands. It is a 
poor word. It is in no sense a Biblical word, and 
yet it has come to stand for the New Testament 
conception of God, the conception of God that 
saves the reality of God to mankind. It makes 
real the eternal love of God and his eternal joy. 
It tells us that God is in himself a mystic, 
unfathomable, social whole, that his unity is not 
the unity of the bare individual, but the unity 
of harmonious difference. It tells us that God is 
eternally the Father, and the Son, and the Holy 
Spirit, that He is in himself the ineffable society, 
that in himself there is eternally the living 
whole according to which He is to make our 
human race, our human world. 

Thinking of God not as eternally solitary, but 
as forever an incomprehensible society in himself, 
we look upon the epoch of his being before all 
worlds with wonder and joy. Forever in hirnself 
there are those exchanges of thought, those mu- 
tualities of love, those reciprocities of being, that 
are the heart of our happiest existence. We can 
dream over the eternal society in God before 
sin or weakness or woe was in the universe, 



382 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

when all was light, splendor, and peace, when no- 
where was there any darkness or cloud or shadow, 
when only the Eternal wisdom, the Eternal love, 
and the Eternal strength were, and were all in 
all. 

O happy universe ! O blessed Eternal Being ! 
The finite has not been born. The finite does 
not exist. There is no limitation upon the Life 
that is all in all, there is no wrong, no cruelty, 
no sad struggle, no heart-break anywhere ; there 
is no death in all the universe, no voice of weep- 
ing, as of Rachel weeping for her children, and 
refusing to be comforted, because they are not ; 
no death, no grave, no despair ; nothing but the 
morning without clouds, the fair eternal morn- 
ing, nothing but boundless vision, boundless love, 
boundless life and joy. O blessed universe, last 
forever ! Break not forth from the beatitude of 
thy perfect and unshadowed bliss. O Eternal 
God, who in thyself art all in all, continue to 
be all in all, content forever with thy perfect 
Fatherhood, thy perfect Sonhood, and thy Holy 
Spirit. Be thou the blessed universe ; let the 
blessed universe be thy life and thine alone. 

2. The prayer is vain ; there is the second 
epoch in the being of God, his life in all worlds. 
Day unto day uttereth speech, night unto night 
showeth forth knowledge. The heavens are here, 
declaring the glory of God. The cosmos is here, 



GOD ALL IN ALL 383 

ordered, advancing, living, the solemn and amaz- 
ing embodiment of the mind and will of God. 
Life is here spreading into endless varieties, 
climbing into new and higher forms. Man is 
here with his dual nature, his sense and reason, 
his flesh and spirit, his kinship with the animal 
and his affinity with God. 

The second great epoch in its highest form 
has begun. The conscience of God seeks expres- 
sion in the existence of this dual creature man. 
There is the birth of the ideal in the human 
soid. Over the personal life, over the life of the 
family, over lovers' communion and marriage 
altar, over the cradle and the school and the 
house of prayer, the ideals gather ; over the socie- 
ties of trade and the nation they assemble, with 
a bright, particular star for every relation, for 
every interest, for every vocation, with a galaxy 
of stars for the total social existence of man, an 
inward firmament ample as the outward, crowded 
as that is with unsetting worlds that burn for- 
ever in the heights of man's being, and that 
form the heights, overawe and fascinate, amaze 
and hallow, command and bless, the weary race 
of mortal men. 

With the birth of the ideal there comes the 
beginning of moral struggle. That heavenly 
vision will not allow man to rest. The ideal is 
with man, and he can no more outrun it than he 



384 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

can outrun his own shadow. It is the ima^e, the 
shadow, the spirit and presence of God in the 
heart of our existence. 

" Whither shall I go from thy spirit ? 

Or whither shall I flee from thy presence ? 

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there : 

If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there. 

If I take the wings of the morning, 

And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea ; 

Even there shall thy hand lead me, 

And thy right hand shall hold me. 

If I say, Surely the darkness shall overwhelm me, 

And the light about me shall be night ; 

Even the darkness hideth not from thee, 

But the night shineth as the day : 

The darkness and the light are both alike to thee." 

Omnipresent is the ideal. Its light is every- 
where. By it we know that error is error, that 
wrong is wrong, that sin is sin. We know its 
presence in regret and grief, in remorse and de- 
spair, in the whole descending bitterness of the 
selfish life, in all the circles of the moral inferno, 
in the utmost depth of malice and shame. By 
the ever-present ideal we know that we are men, 
and that we have outraged our humanity. By it 
we know the sweetness of repentance, the con- 
solation of the new purpose, the high and solemn 
joy of moral manhood victorious in temptation, 
strong in service, undismayed in adversity, fear- 
less in death, at peace with the universe, upheld 
by vast hopes in the heart of mystery. The ideal 



GOD ALL IN ALL 385 

is the glorious presence of God in the human 
mind. The straggle and the suffering of man in 
the presence of the ideal are the struggle and the 
suffering of man in the life of God. 

What a great epoch this is ! We think first 
of all of this awakening of a race of animals 
by flashing in upon the members of it an image 
of higher good, of better things, of mightier 
ranges of being, of the moral life of God. This 
is the first movement in the vast process. A race 
of animals is arrested ; something has touched 
it from above ; something from behind the skies 
has passed into its heart. It was a race of ani- 
mals ; it is now a race of men. It is a race 
awakened to the sovereignty of the moral order. 
It is a race with a conscience summoned to the 
vision and the service of God. It is as if we 
heard in the thick darkness of animalism the 
words ring out, " Let there be light : and there 
was light.'' The conscience of God has now a 
sphere of expression and operation beyond him- 
self. He is the Creator of a morally awakened 
race, He is the God and Father of men. 

The next thing that strikes one is the waste 
in this epoch. So many lives there are that look 
up once or twice, and then forever afterwards 
look down. So many souls there are that never 
come to anything, that waste their power in sin 
and shame, that follow paths of evil and disgrace 



386 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

into despair, that go at last to swell the awful 
volume of human failure. What a dead sea is 
this ! What a depth of waste and shame, what a 
charnel-house set in the light of the ideal ! There 
in the light of the eternal ideal are exposed for 
recognition the sweet children that ended exist- 
ence in crime, the fair youth that became the 
plague of society, the men and women who in 
their headlong career of vice abandoned all honor, 
the men and women of genius who lent imagi- 
nation to transfigure lust and glorify the beast, 
and the countless company who simply became 
sordid and mean, and who sank at last, helpless, 
worthless, hopeless, into the dark embrace of 
death. What a multitude that is, lying in the 
morgue of history awaiting recognition ; and there 
is none to recognize or pity or put them out of 
sight but God. 

Then comes the tragedy in the life of the 
good. They mean well, they make mistakes, and 
they suffer from mistakes. They did not know 
the time of their visitation, and they have thus 
brought upon themselves enduring distress. They 
aim high, and the arrow falls far short of the 
mark. They aim again and again, and they do 
not attain. The pursuit of the moral goal breeds 
a kind of despair. Who is sufficient for these 
things? We fight with beasts as Paul did at 
Ephesus, and we carry through life the marks of 



GOD ALL IN ALL 387 

their teeth upon our nature. Everywhere our 
ignorance and weakness conspire to limit our 
attainment, sometimes to defeat our endeavor. 
We rise fresh every morning, salute with devout 
hearts the shining hours full of good, full of 
God, and we retire every evening weary with 
the consciousness that mistake has again kept 
us from complete and glorious victory. Paul be- 
gins his Christian life with the challenge, " Am 
I not an apostle ? " He ends it with the confes- 
sion, " I am the chief of sinners ; " and he adds 
the great tragic note, " I did it ignorantly in 
unbelief." Oh, the tragic mistake of the good 
soul ! Oh, the intellect, unequal servant of the 
good will ! Oh, the poor device that defeats or 
limits the victory of the good intent ! This is 
the pure tragedy of the world, — this ignorance 
and weakness by which our best purposes and 
endeavors are beaten back in defeat. The tra- 
gedy of the world is not given in the sin of Judas. 
That is pure crime. That is unmitigated waste 
and shame. The tragedy of the world is given 
in Peter's denial. Weakness overwhelmed him. 
There was no vision left, no strength to support 
the generous resolve, " I will go with thee to 
prison and to death." The man went down with 
love alive in his heart, with a noble purpose 
keeping its hold upon his will ; he went down 
through ignorance, through weakness, through 



388 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

the surprise that overwhelmed the mind unequal 
to the service of the noble intent. This is the 
tragedy of our time. The good man in temp- 
tation, in a difficult duty, in a great crisis of 
existence, falling from his goodness through mis- 
take. He is the soldier on picket duty, who 
never means to be unfaithful, whose soul shrinks 
with horror at unfaithfulness, and who yet in an 
hour of weakness falls asleep at his post. When 
he is called, court-martialed, sentenced, and led 
forth to be shot, do not his comrades see the 
tragedy in his life ? Do they not see how differ- 
ent his case is from that of the wretch who never 
meant to be true, who is shot because he is a 
wretch ? Do they not feel the pity of it when 
they see him fall, pierced by a hundred bullets ? 
That is part of the vision of this world, — the 
suffering, sometimes the fatal suffering, that 
comes from the ignorance and the weakness of 
the brave. 

We stand at a distance and survey this mighty 
epoch of human history. If we stand too near, 
we shall be dismayed by the horror of the battle- 
field, its slaughter and its agony. If we stand 
where we can see it all, we shall feel that the 
God of battles is in it, and that the forces of his 
spirit are supreme. He has made man. He has 
made man aware of his manhood. He has made 
man know himself in the descent of shame, in 



GOD ALL IX ALL 389 

the inferno of the wicked life. He has made 
man know himself in the struggle upward, in the 
sense of limitation and defeat. He has made 
the race of man, and through the fiery courses 
of woe, through the heart of the world's deepest 
tragedy, He is greatening within man the sense 
of his humanity. As we survey this tremendous 
epoch, we cry out for our own comfort, and for 
the comfort of mankind : — 

" O love that will not let me go." We look 
upon a scene, — confused, wild, tragic, tremen- 
dous, but beating high with life, pulsing with 
the presence of God. Our sinful, erring, suffer- 
ing race is here, and God is with us, God is in 
us. We shall not be moved ; God shall help us, 
and that right early. We are here in this wide 
and terrible desert wherein are nameless dis- 
tresses, and we are the flock of God, and He is 
our shepherd. Yea, though we walk through 
the valley of the shadow of death, we shall fear 
no evil ; for He is with us, He is within us. 

3. There is the final epoch in the life of God. 
In the first epoch God was the universe ; in 
the second the universe reaching its climax in 
man was other than God, while living upon his 
strength ; in the final epoch the universe is taken 
back into the Eternal life, and God becomes all 
in all. 

Here is the hope for the wasted existence on 



390 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

the earth. Human history is less than an hour in 
the great and terrible day of the Lord. Human 
life with its threescore years and ten is less than 
a moment in the vast redemptive process of our 
God. The souls that have turned life here into 
shame are on the fiery courses of woe. None 
may say how long or how terrible their punish- 
ment may be. They were made for the vision 
and service of God ; they have unmade them- 
selves. On the potter's wheel they have gone 
to pieces ; they are thrown to the rubbish-heap. 
But the clay is good, the wheel whirls forever, 
and the potter loves his task. The broken ves- 
sel will soften into the new lump, the old clay 
will be put upon the wheel again, the old eter- 
nal design will forever seek the perfect embodi- 
ment of its high beauty. Such must be our 
hope. Souls made in the image of God may not 
die ; souls that have outraged their being may 
not enter the kingdom of God. Souls that are 
outside that kingdom are in the realm where 
God recovers the waste of our world, where He 
remakes the broken, worthless human life. 

" I stood at Naples once, a night so dark 
I could have scarce conjectured there was earth 
Anywhere, sky or sea or world at all : 
But the night's black was burst through by a blaze — 
Thunder struck blow on blow, earth groaned and bore, 
Through her whole length of mountain visible ; 
There lay the city thick and plain with spires, 



GOD ALL IN ALL 31)1 

And, [ike a ghost disshrouded, white the sea. 
So may the truth be flashed out by one blow, 
And (Juido see, one instant, and be saved. 
Else I avert my face, nor follow him 
Into that sad obscure sequestered state 
Where God unmakes but to remake the soul 
He else made first in vain; which must not be." 

If this is not too good to be true, if life that 
here has been an expense of being in a waste of 
shame may not forever lie as a mere rubbish- 
heap in God's universe, we may well believe that 
all the sorrowful issues of mistake and weakness 
shall at last be healed, that God shall abolish 
the tragedy of our existence by abolishing its 
cause. And He shall conserve the great human 
issues of this tragic world. All the pity for suf- 
fering souls, all the horror of the black issues 
of mistake, all the sympathy and tenderness, all 
the pure aspiration and high prayer, shall be 
kept forever. The wealth of soul that has been 
gained in this process of blood and tears shall 
not be lost. The tragedy shall end because igno- 
rance and weakness shall be done away, and 
the great heart of the brave who fought and 
suffered defeat, who were caught in meshes of 
error that they could not rend asunder, shall 
beat with a heavenly joy. And the joy shall be 
a song iu which the major notes of final victory 
and peace shall be set in the vast minor of re- 
membered mistake and sorrow. Oh, that song 



392 THROUGH MAN TO GOD 

of Moses and the Lamb ! the triumphant peal of 
a redeemed humanity, singing in the memory 
of this scene of tragedy, singing with a voice 
like the voice of many waters, as if all the tears 
and all the sorrows of all time were pouring 
their pathos into it. The process of tragedy is 
in God ; its issues are with Him. 

Here, too, we may see how clear the hope of 
the deathless life burns. God shall recall the 
universe into his own life ; worlds shall dissolve 
into their elements, mere physical individuality 
shall pass away. All life that is without the 
capacity of rational being must run its brief 
course, but souls made in the image of the moral 
Deity, made for his heart, created children of 
God, shall last forever; They shall be recalled, 
like a constellation of wandering stars, into the 
deep bosom of the Eternal Being. They shall be 
recalled into the centres of the light ineffable. 
The dead are with God, as stars unseen at noon 
are in the heavens ; the dead are with God, 
recalled to the life in Him, moving on higher 
courses, but covered by the light that is inacces- 
sible. The dead are in God, concealed in light, 
serving in the centres of a glory into which mor- 
tal vision may not penetrate. The dead shall be 
with God, the small and the great, recalled 
to his heart, placed there as the permanent em- 
bodiments of his creative love, kept in being 



GOD ALL IN ALL 393 

that they may behold, serve, and enjoy Him for- 
ever. 

Is there no comfort in this vision ? If it is 
true that God shall again be the universe, it is 
true that all in God must accord with his soul. 
All sin, all sorrow, all weakness, shall pass away. 
The terrible discords of existence shall be shed 
forever. The vision is of the Holy City. And 
they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any 
more, neither shall the sun strike upon them, 
nor any heat, for the Lamb that is in the midst 
of the throne shall be their Shepherd, and shall 
guide them unto fountains of waters of life, and 
God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. 
Oli, that stainless, tearless universe! Oh, that 
universe in God ! Oh, the tenderness and the 
strength in our God ! Like the dear mother long 
since vanished from us, He shall take us soul by 
soul in our mistakes and fears and heartbreaks, 
and with his own hand wipe away our tears. 
Like the father who put his strength round us, 
He shall compass our being with his Almighty 
love. Oh, the vision of the redeemed and sorrow- 
less race of mortal men, what sweetness, what 
solace it brings ! 

Is there here no inspiration for the soul that 
would be just and pure? Whence come our 
paralysis and despair? From doubt concerning 
the victory of good over evil. When we lose our 



394 THBOUGH MAN TO GOD 

faith in our own possible nobleness, when we 
surrender our belief in the possible nobleness of 
our fellow men, when we have no longer high 
confidence in the power of truth over human 
hearts at home and abroad, then we abandon 
endeavor. When hope dies, endeavor ends. Doubt 
of the victory of good over evil is the thing, and 
the only thing, that cuts the nerve of moral 
service. This is our supreme calamity. Moral 
discouragement is the source of all but a small 
fraction of the sins of men, moral discourage- 
ment is the origin of the greater part of the in- 
difference of good people to the claims of the 
kingdom of God. Take all hope of goodness out 
of the heart of man, and to-morrow you will find 
him herding with the beast of the field. The 
vision of God triumphant, — not that, but the 
horror of the devil triumphant, is the great de- 
stroyer of moral endeavor. The vision of eter- 
nal sin, defiant forever, is the supreme dismay. 
For, as Maurice said, we need then a new Te 
Deum, a chant in infinite gloom, — " We praise 
thee, O Devil, we acknowledge thee to be the 
Lord." 

As our hope is in God, so our inspiration is 
from Him. He is on the side of every soul that 
seeks the righteous life. And when we join Him 
in service for the coming of his kingdom, we 
trust to his power to win our cause and to reward 



GOD ALL IN ALL 395 

our labor. When we are confident that we shall 
not fail, how earnest we become in our personal 
devotion, how large and free we become in our 
public service, how generous and how joyous 
as sustainers of the great causes of mankind ! 
When we rise to the vision of the truth that 
no falsehood can defeat, of the right that no 
wrong can crush, of the goodness that no evil 
can overpower, we rise to our best estate as mem- 
bers of the Church of Christ. Serious but not 
hopeless, difficult but not uncontrollable, tre- 
mendous but subject in the long eternal years to 
God, is the moral being of this race of ours. 
And we bless God that the universe has never 
escaped from his control. We bless God for the 
vision of the angel standing in the sun, the spirit- 
ual splendor in the heart of splendor, the re- 
deemed humanity become all light, all fire, and 
set forever in the infinite glory of God. We 
bless God for the hope of a universe recalled to 
himself, for the dream that hears again the song 
of the morning stars, the shout of the sons of 
God, for the fitful, but solemn, expectation that 
again in all worlds, in all souls, in sovereign 
power and grace God shall be all in all. 



(Cfre ftilierpibe pre?? 

Electrotyped and printed by H . O. Houghton 6- Co. 
Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 



OCT 5 1900 



/ 



